Can a phone number be dialed indirectly?

That’s hilarious. Who knows how those old state industries used to think. I’m sure the reasoning was nothing to do with logic and more to do with connections between The Post Office and the Oil Dampers’ Union or something.

(If tap dial fraud wasn’t enough, when DTMF came in my mate circumvented the entire thing by rewiring our local call box and installing his own socket round the back of the phone, so you could bring your own “trimphone” in and dial anywhere for free. He’s now a senior manager in a very well known American software company…)

It can. See this thread I linked to earler.

Mangetout, why not try out the “break the dial tone test” I suggested? Let us know what happens.

They all do. That’s the default POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) configuration. TT is newer, and may still be an extra-cost option some backward places.

As soon as my voice returns to normal, I intend to - oddly enough, this was an idea I’ve been toying with for several weeks prior to reading this thread.

I used one back in that long distanct past – “bc” before cell phones, when I had to use pay phones a lot. There were several advantages:

It would store phone numbers, which I could then directly input without dialing. No big deal, I guess, but it would save a step.

I would call the States using a calling card, which required dialing about 22 digits, including several pauses. The device would allow me to put in these pauses, so I would get this all dialed easily.

I am well aware of this - but in order to dial a phone number, the computer had to generate some DTMF tones and play them on the acoustic coupler, no?

I don’t think so. First of all, the DTMF system wasn’t in place world-wide when acoustic couplers were common – news teams used them most, I think. Compared to today’s electronic devices, they were primitive. They didn’t dial. You dialed for them, then put the phone handset in the cradle to transmit data. When finished, you hung up manually.

Remember, this was before the Hayes command setmade modems intelligent in 1977.

It has already been mentioned that this really works. That is one thing you *can * try at home, kids!

But to add an anecdote, in my college dorm, the phone switchbox was in the hallway and unlocked. I showed some guys how you could pick a phone line, put on a pair of headphones, and use the plug to jump the terminals. By tapping, you could dial a number. Trouble was that that there was no microphone so you couldn’t talk back when the person answered. But you could call any number on anybody else’s phone.

Ah, okay, I stand corrected.

Apparently, you don’t remember the early days of long-distance calling cards where you had to punch in the card number, your phone number, your mother’s drivers license number, your brother’s date of birth, and the PIN for the account, wait for the bong tone, then punch in whatever number you were calling. Oh drat, busy. Hang up and try again later.

Of course I’m kidding about Mom’s license number, but it took a serious amount of button-pressing to get a call through with those things.

Pocket dialers also meant not worrying if a phone had a disabled dial, (such as “house” phones at hotels) or if the phone itself would simply stop accepting button presses after about the 20th number, presumably because the phone’s last-number redial had a 20-number limit.