Growing up, we had intercoms in the house. They were sweet, vintage wireless units with woodgrain paneling around them. I grew up in an old historical house, a mansion basically, with a lot of other sweet stuff like an enclosed tower in the backyard with a wooden hot tub at the top, a coal chute leading to the basement, a gun room, hidden passages, etc. The intercoms were like a weird sci-fi touch on top of everything else.
When we moved to a newer house in a suburban development my parents bought new intercoms, white plastic ones, that didn’t have half the character of the old ones.
Frankly I’m a little disappointed in Athena and MrAthena for using an intercom instead of IM. You can’t send smilies through an intercom!
I hope she comes back and tells us that ok, yeah she meant to say they used their intercom 10 years ago or so and it was quite handy until IM came along
HAving had a baby just a few years ago, I’ll tell you right now they’re a complete waste of money. You have to be living in one goddamn big house to not be able to hear your baby cry.
RickJay, baby monitors aren’t for when the baby is grumpy - in my experience, a baby monitor was the first line of defense against what I refer to as “fingerpainting.” The Monster, wasn’t one to cry when she woke up with a full diaper. She’d play with it.
If one could hear her humming to herself, it was time to check on her. Sometimes we got there in time to prevent a mess.
We’ve given serious consideration to installing intercoms in our house.
It’s a rather large, sprawling, split-level, and since my 91 year old grandmother lives with us, it might be handy, in case she would need one of us for something.
The rest of us just IM each other if we’re needed. Of course, my grandma isn’t savvy enough to do something like that.
I wonder if they have anything available, that would work with the intercom system, that is small enough to carry around with her when she’s up and moving about, that she could use if she happens to fall, become ill, need some sort of assistance, etc.?
Hmm. I’m going to check into that one.
Love my built in vacuum. Has a vac-pan for sweeping, much more power, etc. As for the intercom, even though we live in a big house, we know how to yell. Or use the cell phone.
We do however, have a whole house speaker system set up, that’s way cool. It makes me feel genteel to wander from room to room, music being piped in, especially when we are entertaining. The media room is cool, too. That surround sound during movies is awesome.
I remember my apartment building in Great Falls, MT had an intercom. Folks at the front lobby or the back door (next to my apartment) could “I.C.” the apartment they were looking for and get buzzed in. One night, I was not the one sought, but I had lights on in my ground floor unit (plus, my landlord and I worked out a deal that I was the ‘resident management’ dude):
My intercom: BZZZZZZZ.
Me: “Hello?”
Them: “Police. I need in the building to get to Number 11.”
Me: "Who are you?
Them: “Police.”
Me: “I thank you for being polite, but who are you?”
Them: “Police!”
Me: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t let random strangers into the building. . .”
Them: “Police! Open the door, now.”
Me: “Um, huh?”
My sliding glass door: ::tap tap tap:: A badge is shown. . . :smack:
Yeah, intercoms are great. . . when they don’t change people’s words or accents.
Tripler
“Police open the door!” sounds like a very polite request over that intercom.
Mr. Athena’s work VPN blocks IM, or so he claims. I’ll have to get him to try it again. He may be having a “get off my lawn” moment. Given how much I use IM to work, I’m having trouble believing that the large multi million dollar company he works for blocks all IM programs. But then again, it’s not like they’d be the first company to create policy that begets un-productivity. (is that a word? If not, is there a word that means that? I’m not coffeed up yet.)
Believe me, I’d looooove to use IM instead of the phones. Much more civilized.
I’m not sure whether the OP really meant intercoms in homes or in offices. Most of the anwers have been for homes, so I’ll throw out a couple of business answers.
My former boss had an intercom that played through the phone system and its speaker phones. The office covered three floors of what had once been six small business units. The system provided the ability to page someone, talk with someone (required the use of the phone handset), broadcast to the whole building, or tie into an incoming phone call.
Most of the other places I worked either had PA systems, phone systems, or nothing. Once the speaker phone showed up, a separate box with its own wiring system made less sense than simply adding a function to a phone. The phones also had the improved capacity to switch between private or office-wide conversations as well as allowing the operator/secretary/administrative assistant to handle an incoming phone call with a single device. Rather than reaching for the “send” button on a separate microphone on the desk, one simply hit an additional function on the phone to notify Mr. Big that there was a call on line 2. With that option, there was no need to have a separate device to notify Mr. Big that the gentleman from the SEC was here for their meeting–just use the same phone function.
When I hear “intercom” I think of a hard-wired wall-mounted device that has been around for decades.
But we seem to be talking phones here. Were I work in a huge facility of hundreds of people, as a supervisor I carry a mobile phone that is quite large by modern standards (like a 1997 model personal mobile) that is a PABX-type extension with external access the the public phone network, but otherwise internal calls are nothing to do with an outside telco. Is that an “intercom”? I’m confused.
I don’t limit it to wall-mounts, I remember them on desks, but I do think of a hard-wired device that did nothing but permit two-way voice communication, (one at a time as each user had to hold open the microphone switch which prevented them from receiving while they were talking). Some fancy ones were designed to handle communications with more than one destination, but each destination had its own mechanical microphone switch.
Our home phones are set up to be intercoms. When Ivylad isn’t feeling well and has retired to the bedroom, he’ll take one of the handsets in there so he can page me when he needs something.
