# Baffled by rotary phones **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 17, 2019, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937 "2019-01-17T17:54:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937/61 "2019-01-21T22:38:20Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > WTF? I’m an old Gen Xer, and I was setting time on a VCR when you were just a gleam in your father’s eye. We Gen Xers had to do it for our Boomer & Greatest Generation parents. Not only did we have to set the time, but: our first VCR (a front-loader) had a little panel on top that popped off. Underneath was a set of switches and dials, one for each channel. You’d set each one to VHF or UHF, then use the tiny plastic screwdriver to adjust the tuning dial so that your chosen channel would come in nice and strong. You had to do that for every channel your antenna could receive, at least the ones you wanted to record from. “Setting the time.” Those millennials are so cute sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937/62 "2019-01-22T03:06:30Z")
Among the exhibits at the local aviation museum where I volunteer, is an office set up with 1940s-era equipment, including a rotary-dial phone. That little phone is far and away one of the most popular attractions for kids visiting the museum, and yes, most of them have no clue how it is supposed to operate. Then there are the typewriter, adding machine and Dictaphone, but I’ll leave those for another time. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937/63 "2019-01-22T04:26:48Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Add me to the group that believes this crap is staged. I don’t believe it is staged. My 12 and 16 year old daughters wouldn’t have a clue how to use one because they have probably never seen a rotary dial phone. Picking up the handset before you dial isn’t intuitive to new generations and the dialing itself even less so. They can probably eventually figure it out but it would take time. I know how to use them because I grew up with them and they didn’t. OTOH, they are stars on their iPhones and outclass me, an IT professional, because that is all they have ever known and they live on it. I just use mine to take calls and send texts. Old people as a general rule are the ones that have trouble learning new technology. I still know how to program a VCR just fine but I would be lost if you gave me a very old crank phone that required a switchboard operator, characters instead of numbers and party lines that were shared among the neighborhood. ---
**Author:** ![Bibliothecarius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b2d939/32.png) [@Bibliothecarius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bibliothecarius)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937/64 "2019-01-22T13:51:09Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Of course I know that, and I think the generational cohorts don’t align very well with the social cohorts either. For example, they say Gen X is from something like 1965-1980, and that Millenials are 1981-1996. In my experience, there’s a pretty huge difference in the say… pre 1976 Gen Xers and the ones born afterward, and it mostly surrounds the age at which they were when computers/technology became a major cultural force- the older Gen Xers didn’t grow up in a technology-centric world or one with helicopter parents, while the younger ones did, and are more like millenials in many ways. And similarly, the younger millenials seem to have more in common with the 15-22 crowd than the 37 year olds on the far end of their cohort. Definitively answered by myself [back in 2011](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16948887&postcount=44), way before Xennials became a thing (and they _are_ a thing, because I’m one of them!). Xennials basically correspond to what I class as the later cohort of Gen X/cusp Xers/what was starting to be called Generation XY at that time. The later cohort of Generation Y has of course now been dubbed Generation Z. But they were still too young to matter to marketing executives back then. If everyone went off my generational definitions, all generational problematics would be solved. 🆒 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/baffled-by-rotary-phones/827937.md?page=3)