Remember THESE phones?

[RandySF]

Link to tweet

?s=20&t=irlLdGc7cJ2gfjXxsJ_1aw

[beaglelover]

1. I'm pretty sure we had push button phones in 1982.

Hell, we moved back to the USA in 1971 and I honestly don't remember having a rotary phone in our house.

[lame54]

3. 1963...

Before I was born but I grew up with a rotary

[Mariana]

26. You may have had that service in 1982. Everyone didn't.

Also, many people who had touch-tone switching available continued to use the old phones, which worked just as well.

[Spider Jerusalem]

57. My earliest memories are from c. 1980, and my parents had a touch-tone phone

my grandparents had a rotary phone, but it was so old it was actually hardwired into the wall because it predated modular jacks.

[Mariana]

91. My father installed the newer switching equipment

that was necessary for touch tone phone service. He was doing that until well into the 1980's.

There were also push button phones that weren't touch tone, but electronically produced pulses that mimicked those produced by a rotary phone.

[Angleae]

33. I remember having a push button phone back then, but the phone company charged extra for touch tone.

So when we pushed a button, we heard a rotary dial.

[Rebl2]

40. We had

a push button phone by 1982 too.

[mwooldri]

58. 1991...

Our rural English village still had its phone exchange. Village had 3 digit phone numbers. We had to switch our push button phones to "pulse dialling" when we moved in. The dial tone sounded like a cat purring. The phone exchange was set up with rotary dial phones in mind and not push button.

The exchange was updated in 1995 - after we moved away... and the 3 digit phone numbers went away with the upgrade, along with the purring cat.

[BigmanPigman]

62. We had push button phones in our house in the early 70s.

My dad worked for AT&T so we were up to date on the the latest phones.

[ChazII]

77. My dad worked for Mountain Bell

one of the baby Bells and part of AT&T. Like you, we had the latest phones.

[paleotn]

73. Growing up, we had an old rotary from the 50's on the wall, in the kitchen.

Everything else was push button. That was back in the late 60's.

[PatSeg]

86. Yes, but rotary dial phones

were still in use in 1982. As I recall, push button phones cost more at the time. I had a red rotary dial phone in 1982, the cheapest model you could get.

[Horse with no Name]

98. In rural Texas

We still had party lines lol

[lame54]

2. And we laughed at the thought of switchboard operators...

How primitive

[RobinA]

7. I Was A Switchboard

operator in the department stote I worked in. It was fun once yoy git the hang of it.

[lame54]

15. The first video games

[Celerity]

47. The First Computer Game..... In 1962, Steve Russell invented Spacewar

https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-spacewar-1992412

[OldBaldy1701E]

50. Did not have that one but we got the first version of the home Atari. (n/t)

[ratchiweenie]

75. I was a switchboard operator for Airborne Freight in LA and later for the Seattle Chamber of

Commerce. I actually liked it. It was kinda fun. They were big busy boards and it was like a game.

[Dial H For Hero]

97. My mother was a switchboard operator for decades.

I still remember her story of how every light on her switchboard suddenly came on when JFK was assassinated. She’d never seen anything like that happened before.

[gibraltar72]

4. Think we have a couple.

[Mme. Defarge]

5. I remember when a long distance call

was a big deal, and my mother yelling into the receiver whenever she was talking to my uncle who lived a half a continent away.

[TheBlackAdder]

71. Remember when calls were based on the exchange? You could call 5 miles away free, neighbor toll call

[Mme. Defarge]

89. Never heard of that.

But I do remember party lines.

[TheBlackAdder]

92. Back in the 60s and 70s, your phone had an exchange, neighbors could be wired to another one.

.

When you jumped from one exchange to another, or one central office to another, it went from a local call to a toll call.

Your phone books would have the various xxx-#### , xxx portions listed as what is local. The problem was that some of those xxx numbers could be split between two exchanges and you only find out it was a toll call when you got your phone bill.

It's a mistake you only make for the first month.

A telephone exchange name or central office name was a distinguishing and memorable name assigned to a central office. It identified the switching system to which a telephone was connected. Each central office served a maximum of 10,000 subscriber lines identified by the last four digits of the telephone number. Areas or cities with more subscribers were served by multiple central offices, possibly hosted in the same building. The leading letters of a central office name were used as the leading components of the telephone number representation, so that each telephone number in an area was unique. These letters were mapped to digits, which was indicated visibly on a dial telephone.

Several systematic telephone numbering plans existed in various communities, typically evolving over time as the subscriber base outgrew older numbering schemes. A widely used numbering plan was a system of using two letters from the central office name with four or five digits, which was designated as 2L-4N or 2L-5N, or simply 2–4 and 2–5, respectively, but some large cities initially selected plans with three letters (3L-4N). In 1917, W. G. Blauvelt of AT&T proposed a mapping system that displayed three letters each with the digits 2 through 9 on the dial.[1]

Telephone directories or other telephone number displays, such as in advertising, typically listed the telephone number showing the significant letters of the central office name in bold capital letters, followed by the digits that identified the subscriber line. On the number card of the telephone instrument, the name was typically shown in full, but only the significant letters to be dialed were capitalized, while the rest of the name was shown in lower case.

Telephone exchange names were used in many countries, but were phased out for numeric systems by the 1960s. In the United States, the demand for telephone service outpaced the scalability of the alphanumeric system and after introduction of area codes for direct-distance dialing, all-number calling became necessary. Similar developments followed around the world, such as the British all-figure dialling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names

If you read down further, urban and suburbs of cities were late and some of the old structures carried into the early 80s.


.

[sakabatou]

6. Yep, I remember them.

[lpbk2713]

8. Telemarketers were still uncommon then.

If you had a car service warranty you got it from the dealer you bought the
car from. Rachel in Customer Service probably wasn't even born yet.

[Whiskeytide]

9. A good time to post this video ...

https://m.

[intrepidity]

17. Those boys never watched an old movie?

Or even a new movie that takes place in the 60s?

Not buying it.

[TxGuitar]

28. come on

they're play acting. And who cares if they can't dial a rotary phone. I doubt there are very many of us that could survive if we were suddenly transported back to the 40s or 50s or even hell the 80s.
And, to play along, ok so maybe they can't dial a rotary phone, but how many times have we folk stood in line behind an older person who doesn't seem to know how to work the credit/debit machine? or is writing a goddam check? Maybe they're the ones who should be made fun of. If a person is under 80 years old and doesn't know how to swipe/insert their card and put in their pin, that's a far worse judgement on them than not being able to dial a rotary phone is to 2 random teens. It's a way more serious disconnect from reality. Nobody is ever really going to use a rotary phone. Nobody is ever going to use one of those hand crank cars either.

[JHB]

10. From 8 years ago: Kids React to Rotary Phones

[Torchlight]

11. On a lark, we went retro w/ our home line and bought a rotary.

That thing is heavy, banana-yellow and big as a tank-- just the way Ma Bell liked 'em, and just the same as I remember 'em!

Maybe it's muscle memory or just my bias, but it's a lot more comfortable talking on the rotary instead of smart phones.

[Rebl2]

42. Last sentence

Definitely more comfortable than sp., but then I have bad arthritis in my hands. Just uncomfortable for me to hold smart phone very long. Must be why I rarely use mine.

[House of Roberts]

12. I remember having committed to memory,

every phone number of every friend and relative I might even call.

Now I can't remember my own, because I never have to call it.

[happybird]

20. I still remember some of the numbers of childhood friends

But wouldn’t be able to give my Mom’s or Dad’s current cellphone number if someone held a gun to my head. No clue.

I wonder what people in jail do when making their call? Not only do you need to know the number, it has to be to a cell that accepts collect calls.

[Rebl2]

45. I remember my

phone number, my rheumatologist number and my parents former number and that is all. That what speed dial did to my brain.

[Diamond_Dog]

13. We still had rotary dial phones in our house in the early '90s

The only reason we got rid of them was once my oldest son entered 1st grade his school had a Homework Hotline and you needed a push button phone to access the different messages.

[MOMFUDSKI]

14. And the more nines in the phone number

the worse it was.

[happybird]

21. Yep.

Had a friend who’s last four were 3097. Took forever to dial lol

[sdfernando]

16. Guess the old exchanges were stone age stuff

You know...picking up the phone and NOT dialing but telling the operator that answered "Murray Hill 59975" ???

[EYESORE 9001]

18. When I was a kid, our prefix was 'cypress 5'

corresponding to ‘295.’

[ProudMNDemocrat]

19. I even remember the phone number my parents had in San Jose.

BA5-4069. That was in 1962. A Black rotary dial phone.

[rsdsharp]

22. CA8-4752. The exchange (there was only one in town) was Capital.

My parents had that number from the time we got rid of the party line — about 1959 or 60 — until Mom sold the house in 1985, and moved out of town.

[vanlassie]

34. I had a "BA- " in Fresno!

[madamesilverspurs]

23. Was a time

back in the 1990s, when the state began experimenting with over-the-phone filing of simple tax forms. So, I decided to give it a try. I called the number and got the recorded instructions that went something like "If you are filing a simple return, press 1; if you are calling from a rotary phone, press 2." At which point I hung up, filled out the paper form, and chuckled as I walked to the mailbox. They've gotten better since then, or so I'm told.


.

[smirkymonkey]

24. I do. I guess that makes me officially old, right?

This was the phone of the mid- 60's and early 70's. I can almost remember myself dialing one of them.

We have come a long way!

[Stuart G]

79. I am older than you, I still use a dial phone every day. I have not come that far, but wait........

am I writing this on a computer, on the internet?.....Well............................swell!!!.........

in some ways I have come that far, in some ways I haven't...get the picture?..time to hide..

[smirkymonkey]

93. *snort*

[doc03]

25. That's new technology, I remember when you told

the oparator the number you wanted. I remember visiting a relative in WV. They had a wire running on their barbed wire fence connecting to the neighboring farms. There was a crank on the phone, each farm had their own ring.
Like Oliver Douglas.

[hunter]

55. My great grandma had a phone like that, but the wires were on poles...

... courtesy of the Federal Government.

All the neighboring ranches shared one line, each with their own ring pattern.

Whenever my parents called my great grandma to tell her we'd be visiting all the neighbors knew. Especially the Mormons.

[marked50]

64. I read a story about some Ranch in west OK or Texas panhandle that used the barbed wire fence as a

phone wire to talk to other ranch hands about fires, etc. It was something like a hundred miles between places. Said to be not very reliable.

[Buns_of_Fire]

27. Good ol' Western Electric.

If someone throws a smartphone at you, you might say "ow!"

If someone threw one of those phones at you, you better duck.

[Walleye]

30. Yes. Often used in domestic violence when the woman tries to call the police

[MiniMe]

29. I was cheap back then

And wouldn't pay for a pushbutton phone.

[Walleye]

31. Remember when we waited till Sunday when the rates went down to make a long distance call

[Auggie]

52. Yep

Well, admittedly I had forgotten until I saw your response here

[Rstrstx]

32. Heck my grandmother had one hard-wired into her house

Built like a tank. It wasn’t until later that the phone company came out and installed a phone jack but she must have had that phone well into the ‘90s. By the 1980s most phones were slim lines, but I remember seeing some slimline rotaries.

[Shermann]

35. I recall it being really really difficult to butt-dial somebody with one of those

Not impossible though.

[kskiska]

36. Hell, I remember in the late 40s we had a black phone,

no coiled cord, where we had a two-party line. Sometimes we'd pick up the phone and listen to someone else's conversation.

[beaglelover]

37. Remember the long ass phone cord that would be attached to the receiver in the kitchen so

Moms could talk on the phone and cook at the same time? The cord would get all twisted together over time. LOL!

[OldBaldy1701E]

51. Yep. And, I became expert in untangling it.

Plus, thanks to being in a fairly small house, the cord would just reach into my room so I could sit inside the closed door to talk with a little privacy. (I was six. What I had to talk about that needed privacy I have no idea!)

[Auggie]

53. I was too cheap to buy a cordless phone when they came out ...

so I strung a chain of cable lines together that was about 30 feet long. Worked fine.

[Lettuce Be]

39. We had a phone guy come to the house and I smiled enough he gave me an outlet in my room!

This when I was around 12 or 13. It was sweet though we had a party-line so there was that. LOL

[hunter]

41. Mama Bell don't take my pink princess phone away.

Yeah, it still works.

When I was a kid my parents had one phone hanging on the wall in the kitchen and it was a party line. My parents didn't really trust me or my siblings with the phone. If any of us had ever dialed long distance it would have been a mortal sin. And there was no privacy. There was no "alone time" in the kitchen. Someone else was always up.

I was envious of the rich kids who had phones in their bedrooms...

...until I was living on my own and suffering "on-call" work three days a week. Sure, they paid me for it, even when nothing was happening, but damn I hated those calls in the night."

And then I married a woman who answered calls in the middle of the night for worse... mostly blood and mayhem, gangsters with their livers perforated by bullets and such. It was the good nights she got to do something nice like delivering healthy babies.

I hate phones.

[3catwoman3]

43. I like the "clicking-clickity" sound...

…the rotary phones make.

[scipan]

60. We used to play by dialing the number using only the off hook.

You had to have a fast finger.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

44. I kind of miss them.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

46. I even remember the phone number

State 28658.

[Lucid Dreamer]

101. Hey... That rhymes!

My grandfather had a taxi company int the '20s [I mean the 1920s]
and their "rhyming" phone number was
999 the Taxi Line.

[OldBaldy1701E]

48. Although I do not remember it, we had a party line when I was a toddler.

I was told ours was two short and two long. I remember our first touch tone phone. We got it in 1976. We got our first color television in 1968. For some reason, my parents would occasionally decide to go with the 'new thing'. But, that did not happen often.

Who remembers party lines? Who has tried to explain that to someone under the age of 16?

[marked50]

69. Oh, yes. I remember party lines.

My friend's folks used one. Always had to remember to not talk about anything pot related or we could have been in real trouble.

[Mimi Susi]

94. I remember Party Lines

I was born in 1949. I remember those party lines. The only people exempt were doctors and emergency services. Many a time, I picked up the phone to call and found someone on the line. As a pre-teen/teenager, I hated that. And the fact that people could listen in on our calls really bugged me.

[OldBaldy1701E]

109. Yep.

There was a whole procedure that one had to do to pick up the phone so as to not disturb any potential conversations that were in progress. Or, one could just do what this one lady used to do and just start dialing before she even checked to see if anyone was there. Then, she would whine about using the phone. (My mother and grandmother used to tell me about that person, as all were on the same party line.)

[No Vested Interest]

49. I still have the same phone number from when I married in 1961.

I guess it's gone through several ideations since then, but basically the same number.
Spouse has died, I've moved about four times, but phone number is still the same.

Only changed zip code once, but came back to the original one fairly quickly.

[AllaN01Bear]

54. i got one sittine on my phone stand next to my cordless wen the power goes out .

basic black. i also have a slimline analog in my bedroom .
https://www.amazon.com/TelPal-Landline-Telephone-Business-Landlines/dp/B07S58JSP7/ref=pd_lpo_2?pd_rd_i=B07S58JSP7&psc=1

i got mine cheep at a local thrift store and the princiss phone at wal mart when wal mart still sold these things . lol

[dameatball]

56. We had a rotary phone and were on a party line. Later on we got an extension phone...what luxury!

[Stuart G]

59. I use a dial phone, every day..Mr. Dial is my ..."Main Phone" Yes, I have another, but don't use it

"Mr. Dial"... is the main man...the key player where I live.

Oh, One thing more............"Mr. Dial" works like any phone..but when you are asked to push the buttons to get a
prescription or something else, you got to talk to a real person..Yes, they still do that..

[ashredux]

61. Yep...and I'll raise ya one....remember a "party line"?

[Bev54]

63. Not just a party line but I lived in a very small town and you had to listen

to the rings to determine if it was your phone or your neighbors call. It would be something like 2 short rings and one long or 2 longs and one short. We always knew when our neighbour was getting a call.

[ashredux]

78. You be an old geezer...😊

[Bev54]

85. LOL I don't feel old, a spry 68 but small logging town on

Northern Vancouver Island. I do remember as a kid picking it up when it was not for us, then we finally got just the party line but can't remember if that was when we finally moved to a larger community.

[twodogsbarking]

65. I knew a number of people when I was growing up that

had phones with no dial. You picked up the receiver and the operator dialed for you.

[paleotn]

66. Oh, good lord. Three words. Slimline Push Button.

We had push buttons since the early 70's. We weren't all barbarians, ya know.

[BobTheSubgenius]

68. Princess Phones!!!

[paleotn]

84. You betcha! With the really long cords.

that inevitably became hopelessly tangled.

[BobTheSubgenius]

90. Really, REALLY long cords.

A friend of mine from high schooluni had a phone in his family home that reached from the kitchen to every part of the main floor. Just from the handset to the wall-mounted body, so you had to walk back to the kitchen every time you wanted to hang up, or answer a call.

[Stuart G]

70. Are you saying that those of us with "Dial Phones" ...are .........."barbarians"?

The BCC. .."The Barbarian Community Council" would indeed like to have a word with you!

[paleotn]

80. Were barbarians. Now you're antiquarians

[TomWilm]

67. You could actually dial the number yourself?

We flipped a switch and then told the operator which number we wanted, and she would move the lines by hand - unless she knew the other customer was not home anyway.

[Stuart G]

81. Yes, I still do that every day, and every time!

[sop]

72. I remember using my rotary dial phone to connect to my AOL dial-up internet account.

[BobTheSubgenius]

74. I saw a video with short clips of young teenagers trying to work a rotary phone.

NO CLUE about the dial rotating - they were poking their fingertips into the holes.

[marked50]

76. 2 things to remember that this OP jogged up .

My home phone was remembered as "NI"agra-8-4770. The word connection helped.

And remembering the incessant radio commercial at my house while waiting for the school bus to arrive.
"Call Shelby, Shelby the North America Van Line. Phone AD6-9105, That's AD6-9105"

By the way I tried that a few years ago and it was a No Go. What a shame.

[TexLaProgressive]

82. As a former telephony central office technician I could spin those dial really fast.

We never forced them on the back spin because the speed of return was important.

[Warpy]

83. I wasn't cool with it

especially when I had to call some office that was always busy and had to keep dialing that damned thing like a maniac. Even using a pencil so I wouldn't get blisters was annoying as all hell.

I was absolutely thrilled to see those dial jobs go away. Now if only the telephone manufacturers would have kept the 10 key adding machine configuration so those of us who were number crunchers wouldn't get flummoxed by that damned backward keyboard.

However, then there was this:



The size and shape of a brick, it weighed about as much and had maybe a one minute battery life if you were lucky and called out instead of answering a ring. I wasn't rich enough to own one. I was grateful for that, people who had them drove like shit.

Nope, there's a lot of gadget evolution that I'm glad has taken place. Getting rid of those damned dials was a big one.

[Wednesdays]

87. Interesting how the phrase, "Dial the phone" is still in use

Even though people very rarely actually dial phones anymore.

[BumRushDaShow]

88. Growing up in the '60s and early '70s

our home's phone exchange had the touch tone option AND my parents also "leased" (because as you all know, the phones and other equipment were "leased" by Ma Bell) a "chime" ringer for the house.

So much of my early life was spent with a "tink-tink" for a phone ringer (we never used the traditional ring options).

We even turned the ringers off on the phones themselves to defer them to the chime ringer. We were also able to get "modular" phones - with the 4-pin round thing on the end (I remember we had a yellow push button version of the trimline model for example)-



Of course at work there was no such thing and in my lab, we had 1 phone "per lab" (supervisory group) to cover multiple people (like 8 or so on my side) and these were old black government-issue desktop rotary phones with wires that went right into the wall.

Those suckers took a beating though. They don't make 'em like that anymore!

[Emile]

95. I still had one in my house garage up until 4 or 5 years ago, that's

about the time when I cancelled my landline.

[Lemon Lyman]

96. Starting At 0:35

[marie999]

99. The good old days without telemarketers and scams.

[SalviaBlue]

100. You could call "TIME"

7678900. A nice lady would say, “ The time is 6:58 AM. “

[Lucid Dreamer]

104. ...and if you wanted the "exact" time ...

You could dial the Bureau of Standards in Fort Collins Colorado and get a beep every minute.

---- I just looked this up and the service is still available at 303-499-7111

[SalviaBlue]

108. Cool!

I did not know this.

[BluesRunTheGame]

102. I remember THIS phone!

[obamanut2012]

103. My grandmother bought me a Mickey Mouse push button phone for Xmas

For my "teen line."

In the late 70s.

[Stinky The Clown]

105. We have two working Western Electric phones pretty much identical to this:

[FakeNoose]

106. I remember when dial phones were black - you could get any color you wanted ...

... as long as it was black. They weren't plastic in those days either, they were all metal.

I'm pretty sure it all started changing around 1960 or so. That's when they came out with the molded plastic color phones, the wall phones with long cords for Mom in the kitchen, the princess phones with the dialer in the handset. Eventually they morphed into button phones and we never looked back. I'm guessing by 1970 or so, they were all button phones. I think the phones went cordless by the 1990s.

[LAS14]

107. Of course! And my phone number!! :-)

[Samrob]

110. I remember the phones you just picked up and clicked the operator and spoke you number.

Ahhh...the FIRST voice activated phone.