Working Daze by John Zakour and Scott Roberts for August 31, 2021

Hello, Central?

And that’s before we get to rotary dialing.

Grandpa holds the imaginary phone in one hand, and earpiece in the other. With Bluetooth, I see a lot of people touch their ear when they are making a phone call. I wonder what the next generation will use to mimic making a call. I’m thinking index finger to the forehead, will have to wait and see I guess.

It’s the latest thing, Kimmy. It never needs charging, always has a signal and you always know where to find it.

Technology moves on… and on… and on.

Better forget these old things of an old time.

Dang, are land lines THAT much a thing of the past? I only got rid of mine a couple years ago

When I was a kid back in the stone age, you could turn the crank in a pattern of short and long turns to ring up anyone on your party line. If you wanted to talk to someone not on your party line, you just rang once and told the nice lady who answered who you wanted to talk to and she’d plug you into their line. You always picked up the earpiece and listened first to make sure someone else wasn’t talking at the time before you did any of that. No privacy or secrets on a party line.

My older brother still has a crank phone like the Beverly Hillbillies used. Crank it, the bells go off and an operator connects your call. A real life operator. Remember those? Probably not.

I remember when my phone number was MI-33194. I don’t think we had Area Codes. I remember also getting a really long cord so that I could walk thru the house with it.

Just dial BR-549

Language doesn’t change at the same rate technology does. Cars are still rated in horsepower. The light that burn twice as bright burns half as long, but not if it is an LED. The sharpest pencil in the box is now mechanical. The key to success is a cypher code. There is no advantage to revving your engine in an electric vehicle.

That hand-sign could still represent a flip-phone…

I love that subtle yet unconscious “you might know”.

I’ve got an old rotary-dial phone (circa 1950’s or 60’s) that I’m modifying to be a VoIP/internet phone. It’ll have a Raspberry Pi zero-w to run a soft-phone and will be fully-functional as a rotary-dial and will use the rotary dial to make outgoing calls. I was looking at ways of making the original bell ring for incoming calls but for now will play a .wav back through the earpiece. The handset cord is terminated with two 3.5mm plugs going to a USB sound-card to plug into the Pi. From the outside, it’ll look completely original other than a small RGB led at the back to indicate power/status and the phone cord will in in a USB connector to plug into a power adapter (or a power-bank for completely portable wireless use.)

Who gets references like “Butterfield 8” and “Pennsylvania 6-5000”?

Who remembers the Princess Phone?

Who remembers waiting till after dark to call long distance?

When did you last see a working phone booth?

There’s one sitting over by the slide rule…

There was a video a while back of two teenagers trying to figure out what a rotary phone was. I thought it was fake then, but . . . https://bit.ly/3zxq5w5

Just to add my two cents (or is it a nickel now since pennies aren’t being used much anymore) – That is also ASL for telephone. (NOTE: ASL = American Sign Language.)

Whenever I hear the name “Johnstone” I think of Johnny Dollar.

Make Calls With a Rotary Phone Using Your Cell Phone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Md5m6PRcA

Same dynamic that resulted in the “save” icon on computers, who still uses floppy disks? and who even remembers when floppy disks were yaknow "floppy?

My 2016 truck has crank windows.

I’ve been watching the old “Get Smart” TV series. In those days, a portable phone was the ultimate futuristic gadget. Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, had a phone in his shoe, in a watch, in a briefcase, a banana, a tie … would you believe in a phone booth?