I remember years ago that you could call yourself from your home phone and that number would ring. Why can’t you do that anymore?
Sorry, I have the opposite memory. Back on the party line we had in the late 50s and early 60s, we just got a busy signal if we even tried to call the other party on our line. To call them, we had to call the operator, ask her (there were no hes) to dial the other party, then we would pick up as soon as her call stopped ringing (since that meant the other folks had picked up the phone).
I know we could not dial our own number–we’d just get a busy signal.
I forget why you’d ever want to do this, but I do remember being able to dial our home number and having it ring. I think I did it just to drive my Dad crazy as he rushed to the phone. But it seems to me you had to hang up before you got the busy signal, or did you?
I’d love to know how this worked too, and why it doesn’t anymore.
I can remember doing that years ago, too. Although I don’t specifically recall doing it with a pushbutton phone, it was all dial types back then.
I can’t say for sure, but I’ll swing a guess that the older mechanical-relay switching systems for routing the call were “slow” enough that you could dial, then hang up as the “ring” signal was making it’s way through the system.
And either the newer “solid state” switching is too “fast” for a phone to call itself, or it’s been specifically programmed that way for whatever reason.
I can punch my number in and hang up the phone, it’ll ring and when I pick it up I get a recording telling me to stay on the line,that someone on my party line is trying to call me.