When was the last time you DIALED a phone?

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

I'm talking rotary phone here!

For me it was a few hours ago.

I got my old Automatic Electric Company pay phone (a gift from my dad ages ago) out of storage in the basement, and jigged with the wires for a bit, and got it to work. Now it's attached to the wall by my computer! A melding of high and low tech!

The phone placard still has numbers on it from years ago, including the local police emergency number, 222-3333. That number was designated because it was a 'low pull number' and could be dialed quicker than say, 999-0000.

Mine looks just like this one except mine is silver, not black.

So, when did you last dial a phone?

[Annie]

I bought a dial phone (at the antique store, TYVM) because I hate the digital ring sound on my cordless. The black beast rings, and the ringer on the cordless remains off. I dial it when I can't find the cordless

[Phlosphr]

In Maine, with my wife whilst staying at a wonderful Bed & Breakfast near Camden. I remember picking up the phone and thinking, "wow, those are odd buttons..."
Then realized it was indeed a yellow rotary phone , just like I had in the 70's. Nice !

[NinetyWt]

Probably sometime in the late 80's, if you count childrens' toy phones. My daughter had a red one with a dial on it.

[Le Ministre de l'au-delà]

The best phone in my in-laws house is a rotary from the mid-70's. I don't know how their area escaped when just about everywhere else in south-western Ontario had to switch to touch tone dialing in the late '80s., but they still have service. I used that phone last week.

[FatBaldGuy]

Originally Posted by Le Ministre de l'au-delà

The best phone in my in-laws house is a rotary from the mid-70's. I don't know how their area escaped when just about everywhere else in south-western Ontario had to switch to touch tone dialing in the late '80s., but they still have service. I used that phone last week.

Rotary phones will work even when the line is conditioned for touch-tone (which virtually all phone lines are nowadays).

During the transition period, a touch-tone phone would not be guaranteed to work on a rotary phone line (although it sometimes would).

[silenus]

I make it a point to always have an old rotary dial phone somewhere in the house. Currently it is in a file drawer, but whenever the power goes out, the cordless phone goes out with it. A big enough blackout will also take out the cell towers, I'm guessing. But you can plug in the rotary dialer and still be in touch.

To answer the OP: It's been several years.

[Athena]

Within the last month or so; I was renting a house that had a retro dial phone in the kitchen. It worked, so I used it a couple times.

Overall, it was annoying. Those damn dials took foorrrreeeevverrr to dial a number on, especially today's 10 digits.

They were easier when I was a kid, and the numbers were only 5 digits long.

[Boyo Jim]

It just struck me that there are tens of millions of Americans wandering around who've never dialed a phone number in their whole lives.

I am old and I will die soon.

[Savannah]

1989. The house we lived in had dial phones, mounted to the wall, one in each kitchen (the house had an in-law suite).

[FatBaldGuy]

Originally Posted by silenus

I make it a point to always have an old rotary dial phone somewhere in the house. Currently it is in a file drawer, but whenever the power goes out, the cordless phone goes out with it. A big enough blackout will also take out the cell towers, I'm guessing. But you can plug in the rotary dialer and still be in touch.

You don't need a rotary phone to do this. A regular corded touch-tone phone will work just as well in a power outage. The power for the tone generator comes through the phone line, not the house power.

[TheLoadedDog]

I've told this story before, but these threads always remind me of my dad...

About eight or so years back, he had a rotary phone. He is one of these old guys who rents a phone from the telco, because that's the way he's always done it, despite probably having paid the value of the handset many times over. Anyway, he still had this old rotary phone because it had never given any trouble and was never replaced. But modern times overtook him, and he found that when calling banks etc, he was presented with an automated menu, and needed a push button phone. So he called the telco, and the conversation went something like this:

"Hello. I'd like to have my handset replaced."

"Is it broken?"

"No, but I can't use it for phone banking."

"I'm afraid we can only replace it if it's broken."

"Ah... so, er.... what if it were to be dropped six feet onto concrete and it broke?"

"Why then we'd replace it for you, sir."

"Indeed. Thank you very much."

**CRAASH**


To answer the OP, that would have been the last time I dialled a phone - about 1999 or 2000 or so.

[silenus]

Originally Posted by FatBaldGuy

You don't need a rotary phone to do this. A regular corded touch-tone phone will work just as well in a power outage. The power for the tone generator comes through the phone line, not the house power.

Well, yeah. But the point is the house phones are all cordless, and I have a rotary phone, left over from a store I closed 20 years ago.

[dangermom]

My dad hung onto rotary phones for an incredibly long time, so it wasn't all that long ago. I guess the last one must have broken or something, because now he's got this old princess phone which is nearly as old as the dial one was.

My oldest daughter went to a co-op nursery school that had a big closet full of old, cast-off stuff like old purses and phones to play dress-up with. I thought it was dumb, in a school with 20 kids, to have 30 purses and 12 dial phones in there (that closet was my job to keep organized) but when I cleared it out and left in probably 6 purses and 2 phones, the teacher put everything back (grr), saying that dial phones were good for fine motor coordination. Then my daughter and her buddy were each trying to get their hands on one of the phones, and it dropped and landed on my kid's foot, giving her a goose-egg. she's probably lucky it didn't break a toe, those things weighed so much. Grr. Anyway, that was about 4 years ago and I'm sure the phones are still there.

[minor7flat5]

Probably a few weeks ago. I have an all-black dial desk phone that I bought at oldphones.com some years ago specifically to get the cool bell ring and the pleasure of dialing a real dial phone.

[Icerigger]

Yesterday, We have an old fashioned solid black wall mounted rotary phone on our basement wall. When my dad owned a bar it was the business phone. Still works fine, I can't believe how heavy the headset is you could kill someone if you hit them with it.

[Harmonious Discord]

Originally Posted by silenus

Well, yeah. But the point is the house phones are all cordless, and I have a rotary phone, left over from a store I closed 20 years ago.

But it came across as you saying a touch tone won't work in a power outage.

I have used the pulse function on a phone in the last two months. I wanted to see if the lines still worked with that method. They did. You were more likely to misdial an old rotary phone. You're in a hurry and you stop the dial while it was clicking out the number 9. Start over.

[Icerigger]

Here is a picture of our wall mounted rotary phone.

http://hometown.aol.com/dn736/images/phonepic1.jpg

[Baker]

About five years ago, until my sister gave me her old touch tone set-up.

[delphica]

A few months ago -- our washing machine was broken and I went down the street to do some laundry at my aunt's house. I realized there was still a rotary wall phone installed in her basement! I think I called my mother just for the thrill of dialing the phone ... she wasn't home.

Originally Posted by Athena

Within the last month or so; I was renting a house that had a retro dial phone in the kitchen. It worked, so I used it a couple times.

Overall, it was annoying. Those damn dials took foorrrreeeevverrr to dial a number on, especially today's 10 digits.

They were easier when I was a kid, and the numbers were only 5 digits long.

I got a kick out of this recently while watching All The President's Men. Woodward and Bernstein are doing their investigative reporting, and they call a lot of people on the phone. The rotary phone. Long distance. And the camera would just stay there, filming the dialing of a rotary phone. It felt like it took forever. I'm sure when I first saw the movie, I didn't think twice about it, nor did anyone else in the audience.

[BetsQ]

Our house was built during the 40s and has a phone nook in the entrance hall. My grandmother thought that was so cool she dug up an elderly rotary phone from her basement so we'd have the proper thing in the nook. The phone is probably in the ballpark of 50 years old - my dad had to rewire it before it would work. We use it occasionally.

[lieu]

It was a couple of years ago and I remember it because I was trying to dial fast and my finger slipped out of the hole just before it got to the end and I had to start all over. Then it happened again. So on the third time of initiating an infernally slow system it succeeded.

While I miss a lot of things about older, simplier times, these phones aren't included in the list.

Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat
Zeeeewhooot tat tat tat tat tat tat tat

... and that was just for a local call.

(What was cool though was my grandparents old wallphone with a crank. You'd tell the operator something like Fairview 538 and she'd say "One minute please", hear a few clicks and you're connected.)

[Scumpup]

I have a 1960's rotary phone in my home. So I use one daily. I sought it out specifically because the sound of one being dialed reminds me of my childhood.

[ralph124c]

Those old "candlestick' phones from the 1920's-will they srill work?

[Darryl Lict]

It's been about 5 years. My pops had a rotary dial phone in his kitchen. We moved him into an old folks home, so I haven't used one since. Man, it was pretty slow to dial a number. I'm wondering, if I switch over to a cable phone system, will a rotary dial phone still work?

[plnnr]

OLdfield 9 - 4574

We had a huge rotary dial telephone at my Mother's house for years and years and years. It finally gave up the ghost and we wanted to keep it for sentimental reasons. Nope, says Ma Bell, the phone belongs to us.

"Number please..."

[Silver Tyger]

Originally Posted by Phlosphr

Then realized it was indeed a yellow rotary phone , just like I had in the 70's. Nice !

I think I have the exact phone in my room. It's actually my sister's. It's incredibly loud and it's in my room so if the cordless dies we can still hear it ring. I think I actually dialed out with it sometime last year.

[Gus Gusterson]

July 2007. There's a rotary phone in the basement of the house we bought last year. I picked it up and dialed my wife's cell phone to see if it worked. It did. I left it there in case we ever need a phone in a blackout (I don't like using cellphones - they're too small).

[Nars Glinley]

July 2nd, 1986. The day before I got married. The store that I worked in had one and it was old at the time.

[gotpasswords]

Originally Posted by ralph124c

Those old "candlestick' phones from the 1920's-will they srill work?

Not at all. If you'd like, you can send it to me for proper ahhh, treatment.

Actually, if you take a little care in setting them up, they'll work just fine. The main "hard" part is being sure that you've got it wired up correctly to the appropriate subset. This is the box that would have been mounted to the underside of a desk, or on the wall, and held the ringer and the electronic components that interfaced the talking and listening parts to the phone line.

As for the last time I used a rotary dial phone? It would be harder for me to recall the last time I used a touchtone phone at home. At the moment, I've got only one touchtone phone plugged in and five or six dial phones plugged or wired in.

[chappachula]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

It just struck me that there are tens of millions of Americans wandering around who've never dialed a phone number in their whole lives.

on a similar note: There are millions of people who have never rolled down the window in a car.
Somehow that bothers me.

I am old and I will die soon

Methinks I am older than you......
kinda sucks, doesn't it ?


(and I don't even have a lawn for you to get off of.........)

[Belrix]

Originally Posted by FatBaldGuy

Rotary phones will work even when the line is conditioned for touch-tone (which virtually all phone lines are nowadays).

During the transition period, a touch-tone phone would not be guaranteed to work on a rotary phone line (although it sometimes would).

Depends on how high-tech your phone switch was.

My second gig with the phone company was a supervisor over the techs running an old step-by-step office, a "stepper" switch. Rows and rows of cans of mechanical switches, relays, and miles of wire. Each bank of cans used a digit of your phone number, connecting to the next bank of cans with each phone number.

The pulses from the rotary switch actually powered the solenoid that lifted the switch mechanism to the next row of contacts. If your first digit was "6", then six voltage pulses lifted the mechanism six positions (a ratchet kept it rising) and then it swung over to find a free contact on that switch. The next digit went to the next bank and so on, through the 5 banks of switches. (If you dialed 7 digits, the first bank just dumped the first two - we didn't need them)

If you were so new-fangled to have a touch tone phone, we had "pulse packs" on the back of each switch that converted your tone to nice, old-fashioned, pulses.

It gave you, the customer, the illusion of having a high tech phone system. The transition period was probably just the time it took your central office to install the pulse converters.

[Belrix]

Originally Posted by chappachula

on a similar note: There are millions of people who have never rolled down the window in a car.

My children had to be shown how to roll down a window when I bought my old 1990 4Runner. Kind-of amusing and sad at the same time.

The also asked me once about those big-black CD's they saw on TV.

[Cheez_Whia]

Probably 1988. We moved house, and got a different phone company that had touch-tone service. I think we had to pay extra for it.

I remember my great aunt having a little doohickey that was made of Bakelite which was used to dial the phone instead of your finger, so you wouldn't muss your manicure.

[Belrix]

Originally Posted by Cheez_Whia

Probably 1988. We moved house, and got a different phone company that had touch-tone service. I think we had to pay extra for it.

I remember my great aunt having a little doohickey that was made of Bakelite which was used to dial the phone instead of your finger, so you wouldn't muss your manicure.

Yeah - that was a rip-off, the fee for touch tone service. We, the phone company, couldn't tell, at least in our style of central office. All banks of incoming equipment had to have tone converters, regardless of who connected.

[Qadgop the Mercotan]

Well, today the littlest Mercotan tried her hand at dialing a phone, for the first time in her 19 years of life.

She got a wrong number.

[psycat90]

About 11 or 12 years ago. My bf and I had the exact same phone pictured in the OP.

[Napier]

Huh. It's been years, now that you mention it.

When I started at my current job, the hardware store in town was still reached by calling the operator and asking to be connected - they didn't have a direct dial number.

I found an old phone in Grandmother's basement about 40 years ago, the upright kind with a round disk and a horn sticking out of it for a mouthpiece, and a tapered cylinder hanging on a U-shaped hook on the side for an earpiece. No dial at all. She let me fool with it, so I started trying to make calls by quickly drumming on the hook to imitate the cam-and-switch action of a dial telephone. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes I got operators instead, and they were surprisingly nice about it.

[eleanorigby]

Last week. We have one of these in my daughter's bedroom:

bakelitephone


I had to show #1 son how to dial it a few years ago. I always liked the sound the rotary made and the "ticking" on the line as you dialed....

[FairyChatMom]

I've got a heavy old pink rotary phone in my studio in the basement. I'm guessing I've dialed it sometime within the last 6 months. Unfortunately, I haven't had much studio time lately...

[Harmonious Discord]

A device you programed in the early 80's was made to tone dial phone numbers for you at public mostly rotary phones. Little personal electronics were just coming out. The first year a LCD clock was available in a pen for $20 we couldn't keep them in stock.

[Apocalypso]

My grandparents house was built in the 50's or 60's, and for some reason, does not contain phone jacks. The phones were connected inside the wall, with no easy way to replace the cords/phones, so they still have 2 rotary telephones to this day. They're probably at least 40 years old by now. I don't remember offhand when the last time I used one of them was, probably within the last 6 months.

[Colophon]

I don't know exactly but it would have been within the past nine or ten years - my parents only replaced their BT phone when they switched to a combined cable TV/phone supplier. I'm not sure if it's the exact same model but it looked just like [http://www.telephonesonline.co.uk/details.asp?prodID=1085]this[/url], in green.

I say "looked" but I still have it at home. Technically it belongs to BT because it was only ever rented from them (it cost x amount every quarter for "equipment rental" on the bill) but they never asked for it back. I assume it would still work if I put a jack plug on the end of the cable. (There were no phone jacks in the house until the cable people installed one. And only one.)

[MovieMogul]

My mom still has one mounted on the wall at her home, though I usually use her cordless phone when I go down to visit (especially since I can't check my voicemail from a rotary). So I'm not sure when was the last time I used it, but I know the last rotary phone I used.

[cochrane]

Around 1981. We moved from Pennsylvania, where we had a couple of old rotary phones hard-wired into the lines, to Tucson, where the houses were newer, had modern jacks, Touch-Tone lines and were starting to offer all the modern goodies like call waiting and 3 way calling. The phone company (one of the Baby Bells) even would store your frequently used phone numbers in the system for you (for a fee), since phones with built in speed dial weren't yet widely available.

[Cluricaun]

Ha! I'm 30 years old and I've never used one before. There were still some around, but my dork ass had a tone dialer that I "borrowed" from my dad's office.

[Shirley Ujest]

I bought a rotary phone at a garage sale for a buck 10-15 years ago to use as a display.

When we have lost power, and the regular phone would not work ( because of the answering machine and stuff needed electricity to run.) I just plug in the rotary and we are good to go.


Best buck evar spent.

[tetranz]

It must be almost 20 years for me.

Lots of thoughts and memories ...

In New Zealand our dials were numbered opposite to other countries. Zero was in the same place at the bottom but then it went clockwise 0,1,2,3 .... up to 9. I once heard a rumour that it was to get around some sort of copyright or licensing issue. I have no idea if that's true but it always seemed like the logical order for the numbers to be in. Of course it meant that the exchange equipment interpreted N pulses to mean the digit 10-N.

Colophon, we had phones exactly like that green BT phone.

Anyone with some rhythm in their wrist could make free local calls from an old style public phone box by tapping out the number on the hook switch, 10-N times for each digit. In our small town, my parents had a 4 digit number with all digits > 6 so it was very easy

People got a surprise when they brought back push button phones from overseas trips, plugged them into their NZ line and discovered that it dialed the wrong number when it was generating pulses. It would dial a 7 when they meant 3 etc. Being a bit of a geek I made some pocket money converting phones for a while. I was easy to move a couple of wires and reverse the keyboard matrix and keep the buttons in their natural place.

[drm]

A couple weeks ago.

My cousin has one in his barn and I happened to be helping milk some goats when I needed to make a phone call. I kinda like them, makes me feel like I've earned the phone call because of all the extra work I needed to do.

By helping milk some goats I mean standing and watching my cousin do all of the work.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

I don't remember.

The last people I knew who had one were my parents, but I don't remember when they replaced it.

Probably it was around 1990.