# The Telephone -- Old School **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 25, 2011, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639 "2011-04-25T12:52:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/101 "2011-04-27T20:10:23Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > And they worked during a power outage. Now, if the outage lasts very long, it will take out cell coverage as well. The tower batteries only last so long. Not to mention that most people have cordless handsets at home, which become useless when power is cut to the base unit. To the best of my knowledge most land line phones will still work during a power outage, although caller ID and other bells and whistles may not. Also you might have a problem if you have only cordless phones whose batteries have run down. ETA: I did forget that the base of a cordless phone has to have its power supply. With non-cordless phones, though, I think you can always get a dial tone, unless the outage covers a wide area. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/102 "2011-04-27T20:12:10Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > How about in old movies or TV shows, when someone is speaking on the phone and they become disconnected, and then they repeatedly and rapidly tap the ‘hang-up cradle’ in an effort to get the connection back. Has that _ever_ worked? > mmm In some systems I think you could signal the operator that way. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/103 "2011-04-27T20:19:47Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > Remember when you used “codes” to cheat the phone company, by placing fake person-to-person calls and collect calls. I think this was part of what they called [phreaqing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking), which evolved into computer hacking. Some former phone phreaks are now highly [successful and prominent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak) in the world of programming and computers. ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/104 "2011-04-27T20:22:13Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Did callers customarily let the phone ring longer in those days? It sure seems that way in old movies. Yeah, the etiquette I seem to remember was a maximum of 10 rings. After that, well, she just ain’t that into you … dude. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/105 "2011-04-27T20:39:17Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Also, when you were staying at a friend’s house and had to make a long distance call, you could call the operator and have the charges directed to your home phone account so you got billed instead of your friend. I got my teenage self in a lot of trouble circa 1986 because I would call my friend long distance, but ask the operator to charge “my” account. I was actually racking up charges on the account of some girl I didn’t like. If I recall correctly, all that was required was knowledge of her phone number and the city where she lived. ---
**Author:** ![Corrvin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbce88/32.png) [@Corrvin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corrvin)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/106 "2011-04-27T20:44:50Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Back in the day when the switching systems were mechanical you could call yourself, hang up, and the phone would ring. You can still get that as a service, although I’m sorry I don’t know what it’s called. It’s cheaper than a second line, though. My parents have it-- they have one phone in their house, and another in the hangar a quarter mile up the drive. My dad can pick up the hangar phone, dial their phone number, hang up, and it will start ringing both phones. When he hears it stop ringing, that means my mom’s picked up, and he can pick up the phone again and talk to her. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/107 "2011-04-27T20:55:53Z")
> [@SSgtBaloo](#): > > Two relevant videos: > > [I have to dial my own phone? part one](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zjlLb0tqGs&feature=related) > > [I have to dial my own phone? part two](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4v-crPSrj0&feature=related) I’ve been on the phone all afternoon, and boy are my arms tired! ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/108 "2011-04-27T21:06:41Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Jiggling the hook-switch stayed a movie trope long after even primitive automated switchgear made the move obsolete. But its origins are 100% legit. Speaking of old movies and TV, one thing that I used to notice that, often, when a character placed a call, the “ringing” sound at the other end of the line would be not a ring, but a somewhat unpleasant sound like someone snoring. This occurred fairly often in programs that were meant to be set in the present day, but I never heard the snoring sound when making a call. From the YouTube videos, it sounds like they might have had to tweak the system to get the ring to sound right. The sound of the other phone ringing sounds almost like a busy tone. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/109 "2011-04-27T21:33:06Z")
I recall being catatonic in awe when I saw my neighbor’s kitchen wall-mounted dial-phone sporting a base-to-handset cord the length of an anaconda with acromegaly. Their teenage trollop daughter could now talk to her boyfriend-of-the-week, reclined on the avocado colored Barcalounger in the rec-room, fer cryin’ out loud. Those wacky neighbors were indeed hard-core technophiles of the first order. Not long after that, they pulled out all the stops and purchased a phone that was not black—yes, the times, they were a-changing. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/110 "2011-04-27T23:35:45Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I think this was part of what they called [phreaqing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking), which evolved into computer hacking. Some former phone phreaks are now highly [successful and prominent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak) in the world of programming and computers. I don’t think it is true that phreaking became hacking. I knew people from both communities, and they were fairly disjoint. Phreaking was far more EE based than hacking. Sure people spread information on networks, bulletin boards, but both areas were pretty well advanced. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/111 "2011-04-28T16:13:40Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > I think this was part of what they called [phreaqing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking) Nah, if I’m reading **Markxxx** correctly, phreaking is something completely different. > [@Markxxx](#): > > Remember when you used “codes” to cheat the phone company, by placing fake person-to-person calls and collect calls. This sounds like what we did when we were traveling: when we got to our destination, we’d place a collect call for Col. Bob Brown to our home phone number. Our parents would tell the operator that Col. Brown wasn’t available and refuse the call, so we’d incur no charges. But they’d know we’d arrived safely, which was the point of the call. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/112 "2011-04-28T16:33:36Z")
> [@Dung\_Beetle](#): > > I got my teenage self in a lot of trouble circa 1986 because I would call my friend long distance, but ask the operator to charge “my” account. I was actually racking up charges on the account of some girl I didn’t like. If I recall correctly, all that was required was knowledge of her phone number and the city where she lived. I recall that as well. All you said was, My name is Bob Smith from Albuquerque, phone number 123-4567. Please bill my account. No other type of verification. I guess that was back when people trusted each other more (and wrongfully so as it turned out 😉 ) ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/113 "2011-04-28T16:35:24Z")
> [@Leaffan](#): > > Did you ever unscrew the speaker/microphone covers from the old rotary phone handset just to see what was in there? Of course you did. 🙂 Sure, I also used to disconnect the bells in the phone so that a voltage check would not detect an illegal extension. Somewhere around here I have a former state of the art version of those ‘disappearing dorm phones’ that looks like [this](http://www.corp.att.com/history/milestone_1963.html). A bit hard to use now because it lacks the ‘\*’ and ‘#’ keys. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/114 "2011-04-28T18:02:41Z")
In our house, built in 1942 is a telephone nook. It has a shelf for the phone, with a hole going into a tiny cabinet where the line when to the basement. The tiny cabinet is less than 2 inches deep, with a drop-down door. It’s to hold the phone book, which couldn’t be thicker than a _People_ magazine. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/115 "2011-04-28T21:03:58Z")
> [@picunurse](#): > > In our house, built in 1942 is a telephone nook. It has a shelf for the phone, with a hole going into a tiny cabinet where the line when to the basement. The tiny cabinet is less than 2 inches deep, with a drop-down door. It’s to hold the phone book, which couldn’t be thicker than a _People_ magazine. Didn’t they often put telephone nooks under the stairs, like where Harry Potter lives in the first film of the series? I would have thought it was a tragicomic touch of the filmmakers, had I not actually seen such phone nooks in old movies. IIRC there’s an old Three Stooges where the lady of the house is in the phone nook, and you see her head pop up out of the staircase in response to some disaster or other. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/116 "2011-04-28T21:19:10Z")
There’s a scene in _The Caine Mutiny_ (the novel, not the film)[sup]1[/sup] where Willie places a call from Hawaii to New York, and is charged $11 and change. Yikes! It probably equates to a couple hundred bucks today. [sup]1[/sup]IIRC he does make the same call in the film, but they don’t tell you how much it costs. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/117 "2011-04-28T22:18:43Z")
> [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](#): > > Didn’t they often put telephone nooks under the stairs A friend of mine has a telephone nook in his house, and that’s exactly where it is. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/118 "2011-04-28T22:29:35Z")
phone nooks were central on the floor which often placed them in a hallway. this would leave no room for any seating and require stand up talking. ---
**Author:** ![picunurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@picunurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/picunurse)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/119 "2011-04-28T23:45:14Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > phone nooks were central on the floor which often placed them in a hallway. this would leave no room for any seating and require stand up talking. Yes, ours is in the hallway. The house is one story, so no stairs to nook. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639/120 "2011-04-29T00:35:33Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > phone nooks were central on the floor which often placed them in a hallway. this would leave no room for any seating and require stand up talking. I used to have a phone like that. It seemed ideal – no place in the house would be far from the phone when it rang. Then I found out that you NEVER were near the phone when it rang and ALWAYS had to go get it, so that was the _worst_ place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-telephone-old-school/579639.md?page=7)