The Rotary Phone

So interesting. For some strange reason, I had been thinking of old typewriters last night (before they were electric). I was specifically thinking of the black & red ink ribbon. I always loved typewriters. When I was a kid my mother asked me .. what do you want to be when you grow up? I said, a typewriter! She laughed at me and I cried. But then she explained that I could be a *typist*. And by the looks of it, my little childhood wish came true. Ha.

 

I remember my family had a rotary phone in the hallway of our house and there was a stool to sit on while you used it. I was 5 years old and the only phone numbers I knew was my own and my best friends. I remember calling her up sometimes, saying, "hey, what are you doing?" and I have a specific memory where I told her I was chewing some bubble gum and asked if she wanted some then I stuck bubble gum in the part of the phone you speak into... x_x

 

I remember I was around 14 and I saw a documentary about Michel Foucault (French intellectual) on TV.Around this time I also somehow acquired a manual typewriter.I started to wear black role neck sweaters and pretended to read Jean Paul Sartre,who I really couldn't understand.I also took to taking long,solitary walks around a large and really rather amazing park near to where I lived,and smoking occasional cigarettes by the lake,dressed in a long black overcoat.You see I was already cultivating the poise and guile of the unemployed poet whom I have become today.Luckily there was a poetry group close to my home where I could share my feverish writings,and was fortunate enough to be published in a couple of their self-produced anthologies,which were available at the anarchist bookshop in Whitechapel.During this time I was also a member of the youth theatre group at the Half Moon Theatre in Mile End Road,and performed in several plays.It was here I met my first girlfriend,who soon dumped me because I said she looked like Andy Warhol.A bit harsh I know,but I was telling the truth.

 

Excuse typos - they have been fixed...I write too fast.

 

At the very least I have outlived Lord Byron,and given one more year Soren Kierkegaard,so I must be doing something right.

 

we tend to think of the past that way, because those things that weren't, didn't survive. but you're right in a sense, building things to last, so they wouldn't have to be replaced so often, and continuing to use everything that continued to work, were a much more popular design philosophy when i was young. mostly because the majority of adults had survived the previous economic depression, the one of the 1930s. and had come through world war two, where sturdyness had also proven useful.

personally i prefer a logical combination of both. build the highest most sophisticated technology, sure, but package it in such a way, that it could survive with no loss of function, being dropkicked to the moon!

essentially that was the way everything on the railroad was built, when my dad was alive and working for them.

 

I saw an old budget motel off the highway that looked like it hadn't been changed since the '50s near my hometown. On the main sign it had selling points that stated the luxuries this place offered, and one of them said, "Push-Button Telephones!"

 

I do remember the day when that was the only kind of phone . I remember when a rotary pay phone was 5 cents .

 

On a side note I remember the current cell phone system being discribed in an electronics mag. in the 70s . I thought they cant make this work . They are computer controlled 2 way radios . The computers at that time were too big , but they did make the system work .

 

And when you dialed other people on your party line you dialed the last 4 digits and hung up until it quit ringing, then you knew they picked up.
We were 2 short rings. Our neighbor was 1 short one long.

 

Those old phones had a ringtone for that: "DING".

I always liked the sound of slamming the old phone handset down when mad at someone. Much better than just hitting the 'END' button, lol.

Old school tech..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZePwin92cI"]AT&T Archives: The Step-By-Step Switch - YouTube

 

..and then came Cap'n Crunch XD

 

We had a cool oak cabinet on the wall with a crank on the right hand side. The mouthpiece was mounted on the cabinet and the earpiece hung on the left side of the cabinet. You'd crank ér up and a real operator would come on and ask what number you wanted and then she would plug in the proper plugs on the switchboard and the number would ring. '101w was my friends # and 354r was our number.

I once saw a stand-up phone that would quack like Donald Duck instead of ringing. Quack-quack. Quack-quack. Damn, I wish I had bought that phone.

My lady friend in California told me that when we still had party lines in our home town, she and another person were discussing where to get some material (for sewing) and that they couldn't find any of that particular kind. A lady on her party line, (that was eavesdropping on their conversation) couldn't help herself and spoke up---"I have some of that." If you had a party line, you could expect that others would listen in.

 

I saw these "rotary" style ie dial phones in a posh shop this week.
Only thing is, they didn't have a dial (I dont think dials actually work on modern tone dialling).

It was quite funny because everyone binned their dial phones many yrs ago.

 

phones are most definitely lots of fun

 

We had an oak box crank phone on the wall and my aunt was the operator you rang up.

Orison, where can I get tv shoes?

 

the last apartment i lived in had a 110 block on each floor of the building in the room where the trash chute was. it was easy to tell which pair went to which apartment. A big cable with hundred of pairs came in and entered the box and each pair was spliced at the punch down block and a pair would go to each apartment. the cable would continue going up and each floor would have a 110 blocks just the same way so you could use a beige box to basically tap the lines and make calls from any line that had POTS service and was connected at the verizon C/O. You could also run a jumper from any pair to connect it to the pair that entered my apartment to create a sort of makeshift "party line" where you could make calls late at night when the line wasn't in use, or listen in on calls if you so wished with a regular telephone plugged into any of the phone jacks in my apartment since I didn't have POTS service.


^something like this lol, except thats not a 110 block in the photo, that may be an older 66 block im not really sure but there was a box w/ 110 punch down blocks on each floor of the building. These can be found in many locations as well outside of buildings sometimes they take the form of a cyclindrical "can" which opening reveals several thick cables with hundred of pairs each that are spliced off in different directions There are many of these around this building im in now and everywhere really but the key is finding one where you are unlikely to be seen, because this is highly illegal...unless of course youre wearing a hardhat and a Verizon uniform, and then its still illegal unless you're a lineman that actually works for Verizon ;P

It's a good idea to carry a multimeter as well, because while the pairs that go to one residence are fairly straightforward (-48v on red which is ring) the 25 and 100 pair cables have a different scheme and its impossible for me to memorize the colors for each pair. so use the multimeter and you see -48v u know thats the ring wire and should connect to the red wire on your beige box/linemans handset...the other wire connects to green

I'm a certified phreaker ;p