We've gotten used to Tat.

[Lannis]

The phone in my study, next to me here, has been one of a series of modern phones that supposedly does tons of things.

It will display caller ID lists, has lots and lots of options, LCD displays of information, lots of buttons.

It also needs to be regularly fed AA batteries, the sound quality is horrible, it's so light that the cord often pulls it off the desk, the LCD displays are impossible to read, and now the headset connector is shot and I have to hold the cord in with one hand while I talk.   It's the third in a series of such phones.

This week, we've been cleaning out my mother-in-law's house, who passed away last week peacefully at the age of 90.   Up by her bed was an old Western Electric dial telephone that's been there since the 1960s, fifty years or more.

I brought it over to the house, unplugged the half-working ATT phone, and connected up the old dial phone.

The sound quality is great, no more buzzing and popping.   The handset feels good and solid in the hand.    The phone is heavy enough so that it doesn't go skating across the desk, and dialing is fun and just about as quick as pushing buttons.  It's got a proper bell that doesn't sound like the microwave oven or the coffee maker.   It's been working with no maintenance for 50 years or more and it'll probably outlast my time.

I'd forgotten how they used to make things back when stuff was supposed to actually work and last, and not just be the latest widget or gewgaw.    For someone like me that just wants to talk on the telephone, anything later than this technology is just a waste ....

I'm getting to feel the same way about motorcycles.

Lannis

[Guzzistajohn]

Not only that but those handsets can be used as a home defense weapon in the right hands. My mom thumped me on the head with one when I was a kid. It got my attention!

[travelingbyguzzi]

All we need now is a party line.

[ridingron]

My mother still has her avocado green rotary dial phone hanging on the kitchen wall. It's from about 1970. Like Lannis said, it still works great.

[charlie b]

ROFL

We just bought an antique wall phone (made in the 40's) and it still works.  Pretty cool.

Compare the old bakelite stuff with moderm plastic.  Heavy and they made them solid.  Even the stamped steel baseplate is about double the thickness of any current stuff.

[Wayne Orwig]

now the headset connector is shot and I have to hold the cord in with one hand while I talk.   

Phone.....Cord....W hat?????

[LaMojo]

Old dial or push button phones won't work if you have switched service over from analog (POTS) to VOiP  service. I think you can receive calls but not dial out. 

[56Pan]

Old dial or push button phones won't work if you have switched service over from analog (POTS) to VOiP  service. I think you can receive calls but not dial out.

My internet comes in on my phone line.  Does this mean it's VOiP?  If I locate an old dial phone, I'd sure use it if I could.  Hard core Luddite here.

[Arizona Wayne]

My internet comes in on my phone line.  Does this mean it's VOiP?  If I locate an old dial phone, I'd sure use it if I could.  Hard core Luddite here.

Guess we stilll have analog phone connection because we get both internet, portable push button phone, old phone like Lannis just got and they all work together.   Frontier phone Co. did give us some filters to install to clear the signals of them all tho.   Our house is 20+ years old.

[Triple Jim]

I've had telephone service that charged extra for the ability to pulse dial, but my current provider lets me use both.  We have a couple old dial phones here.  One is connected full time and one I carry outside to check the line at the NID when we have a problem.  As a guess, a phone like of of the old ones would cost a couple hundred bucks if you could buy one today.  There's a lot of hardware inside one.

[JeffOlson]

I want an old rotary phone, especially one with braided cord.

We have a 1950s-era GE electric range and oven at our cabin. It still works, and it works very well. It can boil water faster than our gas range at home, and it never needs repairs...

A lot of stuff made today is crap (intentionally, I think).

[segesta]

I wonder how many old people are still leasing their ancient Western Electric phones for an insignificant amount each month, yet paying maybe thousands of dollars for a $12 piece of hardware.

[nc43bsa]

I want an old rotary phone, especially one with braided cord.

We have a 1950s-era GE electric range and oven at our cabin. It still works, and it works very well. It can boil water faster than our gas range at home, and it never needs repairs...

A lot of stuff made today is crap (intentionally, I think).

Not only is most of the new stuff crap, but when it breaks (because it is crap), it is non-repairable.  No parts available.

[mgfan]

Lannis- On your bad cord phone, unplug the handset cord from the receiver and look in the whole. You will see 4 small wires handing down, take a small L-shaped tool (spark plug gapper) and carefully bend them farther down. Re-insert the handset cord and you should be good to go. The cheap wire loses its tensile strength and by pushing the cord in you are re-making the connection.   

[charlie b]

If you still have regular telephone connection you should be good with an older phone.  Except you may not be able to dial out depending on the local switching station (pulse vs tone).  So, if your internet comes in on the phone line...good.  If you have cable service for phone, internet, and TV like we do then the pulse won't work.  You can still take calls just not dial out.

There is an in between model.  The phones that had the keypads on them.  Some are switchable from tone to pulse as well.

[Zoom Zoom]

My internet comes in on my phone line.  Does this mean it's VOiP?  If I locate an old dial phone, I'd sure use it if I could.  Hard core Luddite here.

No, the DSL "rides" on the phone line. You still have an analog line. POTs means Plain Old Telephone Service. In order to use a conventional analog phone on VoIP, or cable for that matter, there needs to be a converter box someplace to allow analog devices to work after it. A dedicated VoIP phone is another matter altogether.

In order for DSL to work properly, it is necessary to have a filter(s) ahead of anything other than the DSL modem. An improperly filtered device, such as a phone, answering machine, Sat dish, alarm system, can inter fear with the DSL signal and cause trouble. A phone not filtered will also have noise on it, which is the DSL signal.

On another note, I have never heard of any company charging extra to have pulse dial service, although I would not be surprised if some company out there was looking to make an extra buck.

When Touch Tone first became available, it actually went back to the CO and hit tone/pulse converters in order to complete the call. Many of the central offices of the time still needed pulses to work the line finders in order to complete a call.  When TT started letting you check the bank and such, it might be necessary to hit the # key to "turn off" the converter to allow tones to be sent to the far end. Back then, TT was an additional charge, typically two dollars a month, regardless the number of phones you had. Pulse would always work on the line as well, so it was not unusual to have a mix. Many years ago, we made TT free to our customers, so the TT subscribers actually saw a reduction in their phone bill.

Party Lines: Some may recall when they would get two short rings or one long ring. Depending on which ring you heard, you knew weather to answer it or not. (Yes, you would hear them both.) There were more people on the party line than there were ring frequencies. So, two of you had the same ring frequency. Then, someone someplace figured out that if we had grounded ringing, we could make your phone ring ONLY when it was for you. You still had the same amount of people on the line but you no longer heard the neighbors ring. One person was wired from one side of the line to ground while the other was wired from the other side to ground. (Tip to ground and ring to ground. Tip and Ring being the two sides of the pair.) Over time, 8 and 10 party lines were reduces to 4 party, 2 party and finally only private lines, being the only thing offered any more except perhaps in very remote areas.

Now, does anybody know where the very first place in the entire country was to offer TT to its customers? (Yes, I know, and the answer might surprise you.)

John Henry

   

[oldbike54]

 ZZ regarding that TT thing , are you referring to the 17 year old student at OU ? He was a bad boy , and since the statute of limitations has me sheltered , I will admit to using the guy's little beeper box to make a long distance phone call . Damn , the guilt has been killing me , I feel much lighter now 

  Dusty

[Joe A.]

The phone in my study, next to me here, has been one of a series of modern phones that supposedly does tons of things.

It will display caller ID lists, has lots and lots of options, LCD displays of information, lots of buttons.

It also needs to be regularly fed AA batteries, the sound quality is horrible, it's so light that the cord often pulls it off the desk, the LCD displays are impossible to read, and now the headset connector is shot and I have to hold the cord in with one hand while I talk.   It's the third in a series of such phones.

This week, we've been cleaning out my mother-in-law's house, who passed away last week peacefully at the age of 90.   Up by her bed was an old Western Electric dial telephone that's been there since the 1960s, fifty years or more.

I brought it over to the house, unplugged the half-working ATT phone, and connected up the old dial phone.

The sound quality is great, no more buzzing and popping.   The handset feels good and solid in the hand.    The phone is heavy enough so that it doesn't go skating across the desk, and dialing is fun and just about as quick as pushing buttons.  It's got a proper bell that doesn't sound like the microwave oven or the coffee maker.   It's been working with no maintenance for 50 years or more and it'll probably outlast my time.

I'd forgotten how they used to make things back when stuff was supposed to actually work and last, and not just be the latest widget or gewgaw.    For someone like me that just wants to talk on the telephone, anything later than this technology is just a waste ....

I'm getting to feel the same way about motorcycles.

Lannis

Lannis, our views re: technology are worlds apart. However, I agree with you re: the sound quality of cell phones. I have a rather high end phone, and have had several others in the past, none of which can compare with the old rotary phones.

[steven c]

 The sound of red suspenders snapping is deafening! But I agree the old phones where so much better but you have a couple of generations now that think a carpy connection, droped calls is the norm.

[Sasquatch Jim]

  From 1991 to 2000 I didn't have a phone, or a tv for that matter.
  How was that possible?
  Well for one thing,  there were still pay phones back then.
  For you newbies, that was a public phone that operated on coins.
 Oh, and there were mail boxes on street corners so that you didn't have to go all the way to the post office to mail a letter.

[Two Checks]

We have a party line. It's called Wildguzzi.com!

[Lannis]

The sound of red suspenders snapping is deafening! But I agree the old phones where so much better but you have a couple of generations now that think a carpy connection, droped calls is the norm.

That was sort of the point of my post - there's a new low-quality, low-expectation "norm" when it comes to hardware.

There's no cell signal at my house so there's no need in me worrying about phones without wires.    The old dialer on the phone still works well and works with my phone service - maybe there's still a big room full of clacking relays over the drugstore in Appomattox like there used to be when I were a lad.

Our party line was a blast to use.    If you wanted to talk to someone else on your party line, you:

1) Dialed "2" + the number of the person you wanted.   We were 352-3224.

2) Hung the phone up and waited.   Meanwhile the phone of the person you were calling would ring.   

3) They would pick up their receiver and hear nothing, so they knew that someone else on the party line was calling.   They'd wait.

4) When you, the caller, had figured that the other person might have picked up the phone by now (if it was August, and you were calling Mrs. Painter, you knew that she would be making cucumber pickles and might take a few extra seconds to get to the phone), then you picked up YOUR phone and you were connected to the party you called.

Of course, during this call, anyone ELSE on the party line who picked up the phone could hear your conversation, so you listened carefully for that little click indicating that a gossip was on board with you ....

Long distance?   Dial "O" for Operator ....

Lannis

[Penderic]

And getting up to change TV channels provided a lot of exercise for kids like me!
(in addition to the super strong spring in the refrigerator door)

[Triple Jim]

And getting up to change TV channels provided a lot of exercise for kids like me!

In 1967, Dad bought a 25" Magnavox color TV.  It came with two remote control units.  Each had two buttons: Channel and ON/Off/Volume.  When you pushed a button, air in a bellows was compressed.  As you continued to push, a lever tripped a valve, and the air was sent through an ultrasonic whistle.  All you heard was a little hiss, but the receiver on the set would either activate the motor that drove the channel selector knob, and index it to the next preset channel, or rotate the volume through the high-medium-low-poweroff cycle.  It's amazing how much remote control they got from such primitive but clever means.

[Arizona Wayne]

That was sort of the point of my post - there's a new low-quality, low-expectation "norm" when it comes to hardware.

There's no cell signal at my house so there's no need in me worrying about phones without wires.    The old dialer on the phone still works well and works with my phone service - maybe there's still a big room full of clacking relays over the drugstore in Appomattox like there used to be when I were a lad.

Our party line was a blast to use.    If you wanted to talk to someone else on your party line, you:

1) Dialed "2" + the number of the person you wanted.   We were 352-3224.

2) Hung the phone up and waited.   Meanwhile the phone of the person you were calling would ring.   

3) They would pick up their receiver and hear nothing, so they knew that someone else on the party line was calling.   They'd wait.

4) When you, the caller, had figured that the other person might have picked up the phone by now (if it was August, and you were calling Mrs. Painter, you knew that she would be making cucumber pickles and might take a few extra seconds to get to the phone), then you picked up YOUR phone and you were connected to the party you called.

Of course, during this call, anyone ELSE on the party line who picked up the phone could hear your conversation, so you listened carefully for that little click indicating that a gossip was on board with you ....

Long distance?   Dial "O" for Operator ....

Lannis

We never had a party line since my father was an officer in the Air Force.    But I had to answer the phone, 'Jones residence, Wayne speaking.'  Nowadays that will not be done if you want any privacy.

[Sasquatch Jim]

 
hey Triple Jim,  if someone in the room farted would the T V  change channels?

[Triple Jim]

I never noticed that.  I guess if you squeezed tight enough to go ultrasonic it could have worked.       I did play around with clinking glasses and pieces of metal, and could occasionally get that to work.

[56Pan]

No, the DSL "rides" on the phone line.

(snipped)

Now, does anybody know where the very first place in the entire country was to offer TT to its customers? (Yes, I know, and the answer might surprise you.)

John Henry

Thanks John.  Answered my question.

 

[nc43bsa]

In 1967, Dad bought a 25" Magnavox color TV.  It came with two remote control units.  Each had two buttons: Channel and ON/Off/Volume.  When you pushed a button, air in a bellows was compressed.  As you continued to push, a lever tripped a valve, and the air was sent through an ultrasonic whistle.  All you heard was a little hiss, but the receiver on the set would either activate the motor that drove the channel selector knob, and index it to the next preset channel, or rotate the volume through the high-medium-low-poweroff cycle.  It's amazing how much remote control they got from such primitive but clever means.

The first TV remote control I saw was my uncle's.  It had 4 buttons, each connected to a little hammer that struck a "chime" (for lack of a better term), emitting a sound beyond human hearing.  All you heard was the mechanism cocking the hammer each time a button was pressed.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Over time, 8 and 10 party lines

We had one of those. Our number was 2 shorts and a long. You could dial direct to anyone else on the line by ringing their code. Naturally, everybody picked up and listened..  One long ring got the operator if you had to call someone else.