@JerseyFrank many industries are good at that. When banks first introduced ATMs many charged their own account holders to use them. I remember going into the bank with mama to withdraw cash. She wasn't going to pay extra just so the bank could save money on teller salaries.
I also got to experience the fun of a rotary phone at my grandparents' house. I used to like the sound it made. Not too long ago I saw a phone like my grandparents had at an antique store. So I got to explain to my 13-year-old niece how it worked. She looked at me like I was crazy.
Rotary. Back then, there wasn't like a dozen area codes in SoCal either. 213. Now, there's 213, 818, 626, 323, 424, 747, 714, 949, 657, 909, 760, 951 ... and I think that covers the metro LA area.
When I was young we had a rotary phone on a party line! If you were quiet, you could lift the receiver and listen to other people's conversations, but of course, they could do the same to you.
Rotary phones when they only came in black and were owned by the phone company. With party lines, you could listen to your neighbor's conversations. Before area codes we had exchanges, two-letter codes before the numbers.
@Fish_Kungfu A couple of weeks ago, finding myself overseas needing to place a call and having a calling card in my pocket to burn (no reliable, inexpensive international wireless service was available) and it was ( slightly ) cheaper to go that route than to use the Inmarsat.
@eyewerks I'm more worried about the sanitation in many places we eat . . . but yes, I wiped the phone down prior to use.
Interestingly, we're going to a new phone carrier for satellite soon - they (supposedly) have free incoming minutes. So, we figure if we can get a text through via Google Voice/Internet or using TextAnywhere (which is really dirt cheap), we can get a voice call-back for free. The terms are fairly reasonable for the free incoming minutes plan according to our office manager. I'm certain though that once we get used to more continuity in voice coverage, we'll instinctively pick it up and dial out (and that's where they get you in the wallet).
Weird thing lately is how many destinations are subjecting you to extra (and I mean LONG) security checks if you have a sat-phone on you. Especially Hong Kong . . . it has become easier to ship the phone in via FedEX and pick it up at the hotel rather than bring it through airport security. You can't even get a sat-phone into several places without a permit - China will flat out kick you out.
Payphone...that would be in 1999, at a rest area, when my car broke down two hours from home. Growing up, I would dial with the hangup buttons for the headset instead of using the rotary to dial. Sometimes I got it right and called the person I intended to call. Other times it didn't go so well.
The first phone I used was dial tone, but I have used a rotary phone. I actually have one I got from my grandmother's garage, although my brother insists he's the one who got it. This is probably going to cause a really stupid fight someday.
@jqubed Touch tone is the sound that is made when you press the numeric buttons on the phone. Dial tone is the weird sound that you hear when you pick up the receive and before you dial your first number.
In 1982 I bought property about 10 miles from Port Huron Mi and got a 3 party, party line. We were 3 rings, about 5 years later we got a private line. 20 years later we got phone internet kinda. I am so behind the times, I still have just a flip phone and I don't text. Which still makes my kids pissed. Smart phones just confuse me, cause I am going kicking and screaming. I don't want people pestering me ALL the time! And I don't want all their monotonous apps!
@mick You remind me of my bff. No land line, and both she and hubby turn off their cells at night. "What if I really needed you at 1 am, cause I have been in an accident or some tragic event has befallen a family member?". So even though she is the best, she would not be my call from jail.
@Pamtha Darlin, I have a land line. It's 4.30, something happens to you at 1am , I got your back. Night people, someone has to love them . But I am tired now, going to bed, my watch is over now. Now is the time for the day walkers.
One of those little clown phones on wheels with the string so you could drag it behind you. That thing was awesome. Mine was made out of wood, but now they use plastic. I guess it is technically a rotary phone, but that's like saying a walkie-talkie is a cordless.
@spitfire6006006 My mom had that exact phone! There was an unfortunate tragic accident one day, though, and the base snapped in half. She's still angry at me and my brother, even though we weren't even in the same room when it happened.
@koalamoo That is called a "Pillow Talk" phone. I have both a rotary and a button one. I have a "antique" booth to give my flea market, estate sale addiction an outlet. I'll send you one for your mom if you'd like. It would be a great Christmas/birthday gift.
@maggie I had always heard them referred to as a "french style" phone. Are they also called a "Pillow Talk" phone because of the movie of the same name?
@Pavlov Yeah, it's a french style phone. This one was made by the Onyx Telecommunicatons co. The model is called pillow talk. I know all of this because there's a label on the bottom. :)
My grandparents still have their house wired for this style plug on their phones. My grandfather had someone solder an adapter so they can use more modern phones. Theirs aren't white however. And he refuses to pay extra for touch tone service. Pulse only. With no long distance outgoing calls.
He's out family's original penny pincher. When they want to call long distance they either wait for the person to call or call someone else local and tell them to have the long distance person call them. Occasionally he buys a phone card but that is rare.
I grew up with a rotary phone on a single party, party line. My parents paid the party line rate as long as it was an option, but none of our neighbors did. Our phone line was only a few blocks long. The phone company had a switching center (a "central office") at the bottom of the hill.
Who remembers the little lock you could put in the "1" hole to keep people from dialing out? Well, rotary phones work by interrupting the line briefly. Those of us who knew that could bypass the locks by tapping the plungers in the handset cradle. It takes a bit of rhythm and timing, but I got really good at it.
@SSteve I used to sell phones in the early 80s without dials for the same reason. People used them to prevent outgoing calls in places like restaurants when you would bring a phone to the table. Now those were the days. It was shortly after the AT&T divestiture and companies were allowed to sell phones and you didn't have to buy or lease them from the phone company.
I voted touch-tone, as that's the first phone I used... But when I grew into having my own room and my own phone, I opted for a rotary, which I suppose is the earliest phone I've used.
Still have an old "property of Bell" rotary from my childhood. It was still working when I dropped the landline a year or so ago. Didn't bother to unplug it, and it would occasionally receive calls even though I had no service.
@zippyus It got calls from telemarketers. I never actually called the phone company to cancel my service; I transfered my number to Google Voice and the phone company stopped billing me. (Although I apparently still had an account because they remined me sometime later to updated my credit card info.) I don't remember whether it had a dial tone or not. I've since disconnected the circuit at the distribution block while doing some other networking changes.
@walarney part of the porting process cancells your service... Weird, but then again... It took AT&T a year to realize I was no longer an employee and remove my AT&T discount.
@walarney The old Western Electric phones were practically indestructible. It was a sad commentary on consumer manufacturing when the flood of shit phones hit the market, and planned obsolescence was set at about a year. My mom still has a couple of old wired TrimLine phones in her basement that have to be about 50 years old (original small round buttons) and work perfectly. Almost all the new corded phones I see are total POS, and I find even when I buy fairly high end cordless systems for each residence they seem to require replacement within a couple of years. It's disgraceful.
Are people responding with the phone they remember from earliest in their lives, or the oldest phone they've ever used? I thought it was the former, but rotary seems kind of overrepresented.
@whogots We had rotary phones when I was a kid, but they we're replaced with DTMF (TouchTone) in 1964. I remember our family being among the first to transition, and can recall my parents' friends and neighbors making a huge deal over the tech when they visited. My grandparents, however, had rotary phones that had to date back to at least the 30s, ...oddly shaped, black metal things. The original touch tone phones that we got lasted just a year or two until they were replaced by the original TrimLine models (touch pad in the handset). They pretty much were the status quo until cordless hit the market in the 80s. I got my first cell phone in 1987, and I subscribed to the new Caller ID service on the landlines in the late 80s ( 95% of the calls I received came up as "out of area" as very few areas had upgraded the network infrastructure to send Caller ID info. I always seem to be paying big $ to stay ahead of the curve on technologies that haven't yet come of age. (Next rant: the Davong 15 MB external hard drives for the IBM PC that I bought in 1983 for only $3000 each.)
@Thumperchick Ah, okay. I'm in my late 30s and only remember having touchtone at home, at least until I bought a Bakelite Beast at a yardsale and used it through high school.
@cengland0 Yes - Not too many years ago you pretty much HAD to own one if you traveled a lot as many hotels would not allow touch tone after the call connected (to prevent use of a calling card forcing you to dial long distance at the hotel's rate).
Rotary phone. And the one in the kitchen (if you had more than one) always had the longest cord. Ahhh, the days when you actually had to remember someone's phone number...
@Dengue I had nightmares about the damn thing. Nightmare: Tornado, need to call loved one. 8 - - - - - - - - - 7 - - - - - - - 4 - - - - 7 - - - - - - - omg the tornado is getting closer! 9 - - - - - - - - - - 2 shit that should have been a 3 start over no tornado!!!
@Dengue How old are you people? Think about this, in 1982 ma bell was broken up. Did people run out and buy new phones, no. Hell, I replaced an external house ringer from ma bell 2 months ago.
@caffeine_dude Yes, we immediately replaced our phones because "ma bell" was still charging a monthly fee if you wanted to keep their phone and it was much cheaper to buy one for $12 at Radio Shack.
If you're interested in more phone tricks and stories from Ma Bell days, especially phone phreaking, check out Exploding the Phone.
Before smartphones and iPads, before the Internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system.
@dashcloud Oh yes. I know all about Kevin Mitnick and phreaking, phracking, blue boxes, 2600, and social engineering. I was one of those "ethical hackers" back then and I worked for said phone company afterwards and have been trained on avoiding some of the Kevin Mitnick "engineering."
@YahSah15 That'd be me . . . The payphone at high school - I charged $1 a call for connecting long distance in the early 80's. Always surprised me how many other kids wanted cheap long distance. We were just outside the greater calling area of a major metro area though, so calls into the city at that time were long distance and your parents would really bitch if you ran up the bill at home.
@Pavlov@YahSah15 I used to be big into phreaking as well… The phone system was just so mysterious and fascinating, such a fun thing to fuck with more than anything else…
@brhfl@Pavlov@YahSah15 one of my favorite things people would try to use is that they would dial our toll free number and then ask to be transferred to extension 900.
@cengland0 That would get them the international operator if they connected it (and on the dime of the PBX that put them through) . . . BTW, that little trick was sweet while it lasted, you have no idea how many operators just didn't know any better.
@Pavlov We would get a lot of calls from prisoners -- so many that we finally created a database of all their ANI numbers so we would get a popup notifying us that it was a prison calling. They were relentless in their attempts to be transferred around the company in some social engineering attempt. It didn't work because all our employees were well trained.
@cengland0 Most likely, at some point in time someone within the company transferred them to an outside operator and they were able to place a call that was not logged by the prison. I would assume that would be worth more than gold in some penitentiaries and subsequently I can imagine they would be very persistent in attempting it again (and word probably spread over time from prison to prison like an urban legend).
We had a rotary long after dtmf came along. No extra monthly charges ftw.
@TerriblyHuang Only the phone company could come up with a way to charge you for a "service" that only benefits them.
@JerseyFrank many industries are good at that. When banks first introduced ATMs many charged their own account holders to use them. I remember going into the bank with mama to withdraw cash. She wasn't going to pay extra just so the bank could save money on teller salaries.
@TerriblyHuang Then they started charging "teller fees".
Two cans and a taut string.
@Pavlov Whhaaaatt??? (pulls harder on can and shouts louder)
We had touch tone but my grandparents still had a rotary, it was fun.
I also got to experience the fun of a rotary phone at my grandparents' house. I used to like the sound it made. Not too long ago I saw a phone like my grandparents had at an antique store. So I got to explain to my 13-year-old niece how it worked. She looked at me like I was crazy.
Rotary. Back then, there wasn't like a dozen area codes in SoCal either. 213. Now, there's 213, 818, 626, 323, 424, 747, 714, 949, 657, 909, 760, 951 ... and I think that covers the metro LA area.
When I was young we had a rotary phone on a party line! If you were quiet, you could lift the receiver and listen to other people's conversations, but of course, they could do the same to you.
@Kyser_Soze - Ha! I was reminiscing in the same direction.
@Kyser_Soze Awww so NSA is like your nosy neighbors, how nostalgic!
@caffeine_dude except there was no expectation of privacy because it was a party line.
Rotary phones when they only came in black and were owned by the phone company. With party lines, you could listen to your neighbor's conversations. Before area codes we had exchanges, two-letter codes before the numbers.
My cousin's party line had a different number of rings for different houses. My mom at one time had eight people on the party line.
Last time you used a public payphone?
@Fish_Kungfu A couple of weeks ago, finding myself overseas needing to place a call and having a calling card in my pocket to burn (no reliable, inexpensive international wireless service was available) and it was ( slightly ) cheaper to go that route than to use the Inmarsat.
@Pavlov When you figure in the cost of all those Clorox wipes to disinfect the handset was it really cheaper than using the Inmarsat?
@eyewerks I'm more worried about the sanitation in many places we eat . . . but yes, I wiped the phone down prior to use.
Interestingly, we're going to a new phone carrier for satellite soon - they (supposedly) have free incoming minutes. So, we figure if we can get a text through via Google Voice/Internet or using TextAnywhere (which is really dirt cheap), we can get a voice call-back for free. The terms are fairly reasonable for the free incoming minutes plan according to our office manager. I'm certain though that once we get used to more continuity in voice coverage, we'll instinctively pick it up and dial out (and that's where they get you in the wallet).
Weird thing lately is how many destinations are subjecting you to extra (and I mean LONG) security checks if you have a sat-phone on you. Especially Hong Kong . . . it has become easier to ship the phone in via FedEX and pick it up at the hotel rather than bring it through airport security. You can't even get a sat-phone into several places without a permit - China will flat out kick you out.
http://www.textanywhere.ca/
http://www.telestial.com/view_product.php?ID=SPHN-ISAT
And, BTW - although Hong Kong may belong to China . . . "it ain't China".
I was referring to bringing the phone onto the mainland.
@Fish_Kungfu 2004, the day before I got my first cell phone.
Payphone...that would be in 1999, at a rest area, when my car broke down two hours from home. Growing up, I would dial with the hangup buttons for the headset instead of using the rotary to dial. Sometimes I got it right and called the person I intended to call. Other times it didn't go so well.
The first phone I used was dial tone, but I have used a rotary phone. I actually have one I got from my grandmother's garage, although my brother insists he's the one who got it. This is probably going to cause a really stupid fight someday.
@jqubed Touch tone is the sound that is made when you press the numeric buttons on the phone. Dial tone is the weird sound that you hear when you pick up the receive and before you dial your first number.
In 1982 I bought property about 10 miles from Port Huron Mi and got a 3 party, party line. We were 3 rings, about 5 years later we got a private line. 20 years later we got phone internet kinda. I am so behind the times, I still have just a flip phone and I don't text. Which still makes my kids pissed. Smart phones just confuse me, cause I am going kicking and screaming. I don't want people pestering me ALL the time! And I don't want all their monotonous apps!
@mick You remind me of my bff. No land line, and both she and hubby turn off their cells at night. "What if I really needed you at 1 am, cause I have been in an accident or some tragic event has befallen a family member?". So even though she is the best, she would not be my call from jail.
@Pamtha Darlin, I have a land line. It's 4.30, something happens to you at 1am , I got your back. Night people, someone has to love them . But I am tired now, going to bed, my watch is over now. Now is the time for the day walkers.
@Pamtha Um, you handle it and let me sleep. I try not to be 3am important to anyone who isn't within 25 steps
One of those little clown phones on wheels with the string so you could drag it behind you. That thing was awesome. Mine was made out of wood, but now they use plastic. I guess it is technically a rotary phone, but that's like saying a walkie-talkie is a cordless.
@spitfire6006006 My mom had that exact phone! There was an unfortunate tragic accident one day, though, and the base snapped in half. She's still angry at me and my brother, even though we weren't even in the same room when it happened.
@koalamoo That is called a "Pillow Talk" phone. I have both a rotary and a button one. I have a "antique" booth to give my flea market, estate sale addiction an outlet. I'll send you one for your mom if you'd like. It would be a great Christmas/birthday gift.
@maggie That would be awesome, but she gave up the landline a few years ago. Where were you in 1997 when I needed you? :)
@maggie I had always heard them referred to as a "french style" phone. Are they also called a "Pillow Talk" phone because of the movie of the same name?
@Pavlov Yeah, it's a french style phone. This one was made by the Onyx Telecommunicatons co. The model is called pillow talk. I know all of this because there's a label on the bottom. :)
@maggie Very cool - thank you.
My grandparents still have their house wired for this style plug on their phones.![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
My grandfather had someone solder an adapter so they can use more modern phones. Theirs aren't white however. And he refuses to pay extra for touch tone service. Pulse only. With no long distance outgoing calls.
He's out family's original penny pincher. When they want to call long distance they either wait for the person to call or call someone else local and tell them to have the long distance person call them. Occasionally he buys a phone card but that is rare.
Winnie the Pooh phone. Me and Eeyore go way back.
I grew up with a rotary phone on a single party, party line. My parents paid the party line rate as long as it was an option, but none of our neighbors did. Our phone line was only a few blocks long. The phone company had a switching center (a "central office") at the bottom of the hill.
Mine was portable and rotary.
I could make this thing drift pretty good.
Ha made the edit @simplersimon like this one?
@caffeine_dude yes, exactly! The most amazing thing is, I don't think it ever gave me nightmares. Creepy as heck, now, but never noticed it back then.
Who remembers the little lock you could put in the "1" hole to keep people from dialing out? Well, rotary phones work by interrupting the line briefly. Those of us who knew that could bypass the locks by tapping the plungers in the handset cradle. It takes a bit of rhythm and timing, but I got really good at it.
@SSteve I used to sell phones in the early 80s without dials for the same reason. People used them to prevent outgoing calls in places like restaurants when you would bring a phone to the table. Now those were the days. It was shortly after the AT&T divestiture and companies were allowed to sell phones and you didn't have to buy or lease them from the phone company.
It's really interesting when a high school decided to put on Dial M For Murder. They have to be taught how to dial the phone.
I voted touch-tone, as that's the first phone I used... But when I grew into having my own room and my own phone, I opted for a rotary, which I suppose is the earliest phone I've used.
Still have an old "property of Bell" rotary from my childhood. It was still working when I dropped the landline a year or so ago. Didn't bother to unplug it, and it would occasionally receive calls even though I had no service.
@walarney you got calls, or it rang? Lightning can cause the latter.
@zippyus It got calls from telemarketers. I never actually called the phone company to cancel my service; I transfered my number to Google Voice and the phone company stopped billing me. (Although I apparently still had an account because they remined me sometime later to updated my credit card info.) I don't remember whether it had a dial tone or not. I've since disconnected the circuit at the distribution block while doing some other networking changes.
@walarney part of the porting process cancells your service... Weird, but then again... It took AT&T a year to realize I was no longer an employee and remove my AT&T discount.
@walarney The old Western Electric phones were practically indestructible. It was a sad commentary on consumer manufacturing when the flood of shit phones hit the market, and planned obsolescence was set at about a year. My mom still has a couple of old wired TrimLine phones in her basement that have to be about 50 years old (original small round buttons) and work perfectly. Almost all the new corded phones I see are total POS, and I find even when I buy fairly high end cordless systems for each residence they seem to require replacement within a couple of years. It's disgraceful.
Are people responding with the phone they remember from earliest in their lives, or the oldest phone they've ever used? I thought it was the former, but rotary seems kind of overrepresented.
@whogots I'm in my 30's and we had a rotary phone for several years before switching to touch-tone.
@whogots - There are lots of older people in this forum.
@Thumperchick same by me, it was mid 90's I think before we changed to Touch-Tone
@whogots for some of us, thrift runs in the family
@whogots We had rotary phones when I was a kid, but they we're replaced with DTMF (TouchTone) in 1964. I remember our family being among the first to transition, and can recall my parents' friends and neighbors making a huge deal over the tech when they visited. My grandparents, however, had rotary phones that had to date back to at least the 30s, ...oddly shaped, black metal things. The original touch tone phones that we got lasted just a year or two until they were replaced by the original TrimLine models (touch pad in the handset). They pretty much were the status quo until cordless hit the market in the 80s. I got my first cell phone in 1987, and I subscribed to the new Caller ID service on the landlines in the late 80s ( 95% of the calls I received came up as "out of area" as very few areas had upgraded the network infrastructure to send Caller ID info. I always seem to be paying big $ to stay ahead of the curve on technologies that haven't yet come of age. (Next rant: the Davong 15 MB external hard drives for the IBM PC that I bought in 1983 for only $3000 each.)
@Thumperchick Ah, okay. I'm in my late 30s and only remember having touchtone at home, at least until I bought a Bakelite Beast at a yardsale and used it through high school.
FYI: You're missing a push button pulse phone. Serious error.
Anyone else buy one of these devices to give you touch-tone features on a rotary phone?
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
@cengland0 Yes - Not too many years ago you pretty much HAD to own one if you traveled a lot as many hotels would not allow touch tone after the call connected (to prevent use of a calling card forcing you to dial long distance at the hotel's rate).
If that many of you are nostalgic for rotary phones you can always get this:
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
![](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP///wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==)
or this:
@JonT NO DOCKS!!!
@JonT Aargh! This pushes the buttons on (or dials up) one of my pet peeves: fakey fake "antique" stuff.
@rockblossom See, I don't like fakey fake (especially Victorian), but I do like tongue-in-cheek.
Rotary phone. And the one in the kitchen (if you had more than one) always had the longest cord. Ahhh, the days when you actually had to remember someone's phone number...
Actually, most of us just wrote them down.
Rotary phone? Seriously? How old are you people? I remember using one but it was always sort of a novelty.
@Dengue I had nightmares about the damn thing. Nightmare: Tornado, need to call loved one. 8 - - - - - - - - - 7 - - - - - - - 4 - - - - 7 - - - - - - - omg the tornado is getting closer! 9 - - - - - - - - - - 2 shit that should have been a 3 start over no tornado!!!
@Dengue How old are you people? Think about this, in 1982 ma bell was broken up. Did people run out and buy new phones, no. Hell, I replaced an external house ringer from ma bell 2 months ago.
@caffeine_dude Yes, we immediately replaced our phones because "ma bell" was still charging a monthly fee if you wanted to keep their phone and it was much cheaper to buy one for $12 at Radio Shack.
A candlestick, with no dial. Our number was 449.
Late 40's early 50's
If you're interested in more phone tricks and stories from Ma Bell days, especially phone phreaking, check out Exploding the Phone.
Before smartphones and iPads, before the Internet or the personal computer, a misfit group of technophiles, blind teenagers, hippies, and outlaws figured out how to hack the world's largest machine: the telephone system.
@ssteve @cengland0
@dashcloud Oh yes. I know all about Kevin Mitnick and phreaking, phracking, blue boxes, 2600, and social engineering. I was one of those "ethical hackers" back then and I worked for said phone company afterwards and have been trained on avoiding some of the Kevin Mitnick "engineering."
@cengland0 I believe there's somebody here who hacked phones in his high school days. I forget who.
@YahSah15 That'd be me . . . The payphone at high school - I charged $1 a call for connecting long distance in the early 80's. Always surprised me how many other kids wanted cheap long distance. We were just outside the greater calling area of a major metro area though, so calls into the city at that time were long distance and your parents would really bitch if you ran up the bill at home.
@Pavlov @YahSah15 I used to be big into phreaking as well… The phone system was just so mysterious and fascinating, such a fun thing to fuck with more than anything else…
@brhfl @Pavlov @YahSah15 one of my favorite things people would try to use is that they would dial our toll free number and then ask to be transferred to extension 900.
@cengland0 That would get them the international operator if they connected it (and on the dime of the PBX that put them through) . . . BTW, that little trick was sweet while it lasted, you have no idea how many operators just didn't know any better.
@Pavlov We would get a lot of calls from prisoners -- so many that we finally created a database of all their ANI numbers so we would get a popup notifying us that it was a prison calling. They were relentless in their attempts to be transferred around the company in some social engineering attempt. It didn't work because all our employees were well trained.
@cengland0 Most likely, at some point in time someone within the company transferred them to an outside operator and they were able to place a call that was not logged by the prison. I would assume that would be worth more than gold in some penitentiaries and subsequently I can imagine they would be very persistent in attempting it again (and word probably spread over time from prison to prison like an urban legend).