She continued to say "Oh" when she meant "zero" That could have confused some, since in those days you need to dial letters and numbers. Otherwise, very nicely done.
TBH, I think it actually was O, as in "Operator". I am willing to bet that later on, after dialing an operator became less and less popular, the O became a 0 (zero). Looking at that demo phone, it definitely looked more like a round letter O rather than a more slender number 0.
Some years ago (late '90s I think) a newspaper article with picture of a Bell System model 500 dial phone like that yellow at beginning of this video. Article went on about a school has this type of phone for the line for children to phone home from the office. But many children were confused seeing this rotary dial, "how does this work?" because only type of phone they have seen is the pushbutton touchtone. I have a dialphone, I should connect and see if exchange still interprets the pulse dialing!
If you select the home phone settings to pulse dial, it will work. The exchanges still recognizes pulse dialing as of today. However pulse dialing is not supported on VOIP digital phone systems.
@Jeff Webb we do distinguish between O and 0 as "oh" and "zee-row" [zero]. Those who dont differentiate, likely dont interact with technology very often.
@@Legend813a Susann Shaw, the demonstrator in this film, was a popular fashion model throughout the 1940s and 1950s, making frequent appearances in the pages of Vogue.
Wouldn't the initial "WO" and, say "XN" (or "XM", "WM" etc) be mapped to the same numbers, because W, X, Y is mapped to 9 and M, N, O is mapped to 6? How is WO4 9970 distinguished from XM4 9970? Do they set the initial letters so that this kind of overlap does not happen? If so, that means you can only have (because 1 does not have any letters) 9 possibilities for first number, and 9 for second number ― i.e., 81 distinct initial codes. Or am I completely wrong? Anyway, excellent video. By the time I was old enough to use a telephone, it was the push-button type of phone which I took for granted. And now it's smartphones everyone, and the last time I dialed a traditional phone must have been years ago.
they do overlap but that doesn't matter. in fact, you never dial any letters - only numbers. the letters here a simply to help people memorize long numbers
5:53 contraption looks like it came directly from Bletchley Park!! Who exactly decided on the tones / sounds to be used for the dial tone, ring tone and busy signal? 8:41 Party line???
We used both...I used to work for Pacific telephone As an operator They gave up on central office names in mid 60d THornwell 8-2270 The TH, is central office MID 60S, WENT TO 7 DIGITS
@@kathleenking47 I also used to work for a telecom company, though as a technician. I remember the switch from 5 to 7 digits in the early 60s, though when I was very young, we lived in a rural area and the phone didn't even have a dial! These days we have 10 digits and multiple area codes for the same area. I also remember the exchange names. The town I grew up in had two different exchange names, depending on which part of town you were in, actually two different towns, when the names would have been assigned. Somewhere along the line, years before I started working, I was taught to pronounce the number 0 as zero, not oh.
