I needed to get landline anyway, for my Aler1® emergency button (I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!). So I asked AT&T if they still accomodated rotary phones. “sure, we’ll put in 2 phone-jacks”.
I haven’t had a landline since 1999, and I haven’t had to “dial” a phone since I was a little kid.
I found a heavy, black bakelite, antique office-phone at a swap-meet in 2004. It cost me $3 and still had the old 4-prong wall plug. I got an adaptor and plugged it in, viola!
“One ringy-dingy…”
My son has a phone like that in his house. It actually has better sound quality than the cell phone.
Don’t most land lines?
sure the dial still works. and the bell will get your attention, no wimpy sound.
i’m still waiting for that dial picture phone.
Not necessarily. They problem is stuffing it your pocket when you want to go to anther part of the house.
It’s not surprising. POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) connections, which all (at least in the USA) are, works just fine with technology that has roots in the 1870s. That’s 1870s for you younguns. It’s a marvelous example of compatibility.
I dunno, I’m surprised it works. I thought we had to replace all our rotary and pulse phones when we ordered touch tone service in the 80’s. Maybe it was just a clever pitch to sell touch tone phones?
What made you think that? Even modern electronic phones have a pulse mode (or at least the last one I bought does). Touch Tone was always an option, not a requirement. You can even “dial” today by breaking the connection in a regular manner with the on-hook switch. Did you know that?
Aren’t they great? I have two (working) rotary phones, bought ages ago from a company in the Midwest that saves and resells old phones.
In my office, a 1919 brass candlestick phone: http://p2.la-img.com/1225/28916/11134563_1_m.jpg
And in my bedroom, a French-style 1930s phone: http://zapprops.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/wht30sphone.jpg
I have a rotary wall phone in the kitchen. Also a cordless phone with two charger stations.
The only problem I have is the appointment reminder calls from my dentist and doctor. They want you to press 1 to acknowledge the appointment. if I happpen to answer in the kitchen, then That’s when I have to run to the living room and use the cordless phone to press the 1. That only happens a few times a year.
Kinda hard to figure just what Ma Bell was thinking in those days (ETA: Meaning, as far back as the late 1960’s). Touch-tone was fairly new, and all the (significant) phone companies (all ONE of them, to-wit Ma Bell) were heavily pushing it in their advertising. And yet… And yet …
When you actually ordered a touch-tone connections, it cost MORE per month than a pulse-only connection. (This was true at least as late as 1971 or 1972, when I got my very own phone account for the first time.) So I order a pulse-only connection. I asked the customer rep on the phone the obvious question: If you’re so pushing to move everybody to touch-tone, why do you charge more for it?
Customer Service rep: (mumble)
Note, in those days, you didn’t get any useful value (that I knew of anyway) out of having touch-tone. This was long before you could do any sort of data-by-telephone activities, like phone banking or bill-paying or trekking your way through Og-awful phone menus, etc. Although certainly, the phone companies knew and intended that this would be the future of telecommunications.
ETA: Modern-day automated phone answering machines with those voice menus are high on my list of inventions the world didn’t need.
In 1971, Ma Bell was still a monopoly, I believe. Charging more for a technological advance was just part of the pricing game plan and easier to force if you have no competition.
Heck, I paid a couple of dollars more per month for Touch-tone in 1960 just because I liked the way I could dial fast (and I was a geek). And that was when long distance numbers were rarely used.
Oh yeah, a cartoon of a REAL LIVE rotary-dial. :rolleyes:
Brian, I must get your number so I can give you a call one of these evenings.
Not a chance!
takes me 5 - 10 rings to answer it, and it’s always been a stupid robo-call. I ignore it now.
Unless we work out a precise time.
OK I’ll post you a letter telling you what time I’ll be calling at. Or I could just semaphore you.
somehow, this makes you seem older than either the need for an alert system or the desire for an old phone 
Well, I am 51 years old.
I guess I’m part-Amish, in that I love old technology.
Aye, I’ve seen your claymore. And I’m not talking mines here folks.
