NEWS FLASH Sunday Funday ...

[Halea]

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[Samot]

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I always love when memes or comments like this, specially from those my age or older, completely ignore what was actually happening during those times. People tend to forget these real things:

1. Until the Bell Breakup, you rented your phone straight from the phone company. Buying a "third-party" phone and using it was considered an illegal use the service.
2. Touch Tone services (and thus the phones) was a premium service. You paid more for the phone and had a service charge on your monthly bill for touch tone services.
3. After the break up, you could buy your own phone (rotary or touch tone) but the Baby Bells were still charing for Touch Tone services until well into the 90's.
4. Even if someone had a touch tone phone it didn't mean touch tone services. Since touch tone services was still a premium service well into the 90's people would buy a touch tone and put it in "Pulse" mode so it worked with their non-touch tone phone service.
5. Here's a fun one. When the Berlin Wall fell when I was 15 in 1989, 50% of households still had rotary phones or non-touch tone services.
6. Oh and the real driving factor that killed rotary phones. IVRs became a thing in the late 80's and by 1993-ish were common place in businesses included phone companies which made using rotary phones basically impossible.
7. Despite Touch Tone becoming the "default service" in the 90's many carriers still charged for it well into the 2000-10's. Hell Bell Canada charged for it until 2015.

So to recap in summary:
1. Touch Tone phones/service was premium service/charge until the Bell Breakup. You had to get phones from phone company.
2. Touch Tone phones became more prominent after the Bell Break but Touch Tone service still cost money.
3. Having a touch tone phone did not mean you had tone tone service and in Pulse Mode "pressing 1" never worked.
4. 50% of households in the US still had rotary phones at the **end of the 1980's**
5. It took changes like IVRs and other software advancements in the mid-90's to make rotary phones useless to navigate calling businesses or even your doctor/dentist office.

 

[kenn10]

I was 15 in 1989,

Now I really feel old. You were born the year I graduated from high school.

We had IVR's in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They were called operators.

 

[geopeterwc]

You're all making me feel really old!

I remember a bulky crank phone (magneto phone to the uninitiated) mounted on the wall of our dining room in rural Iowa. Party lines with as many as ten or more customers on the same line! Our phone number was "Ten on Four" and the ring sequence for our phone was "short-long-short".

Phone service upgraded to rotary dial phones in 1953 (I was still very young) on a party line with five or six other farms on the same line. The new phones had a little silver button that would engage the phone and deliver dial tone. If the line was already in use, you could listen in on conversations prior to engaging your own phone by pressing the button!

Phone numbers were only four digits, so to call a neighbor dialing only four digits. No area codes... we had "Extended Area Service" to nearby communities by dialing a single-digit access code, hearing the dial tone from the distant community, then dialing the four digits of the called party phone.

The telephone central offices were equipped with Stromberg-Carlson X-Y CO switches (noisy!). As a service technician, I climbed the phone poles, spliced cables and installed new phones and services. One of my first jobs was to replace the four-foot straight handset cords on the phones with "curly" cords. These were all hard-wired with spade-lugs on the ends - no "RJ" connectors, as well as lubricating/cleaning/replacing the phone's rotary dials to ensure they delivered ten pulses per second. "Routine maintenance" went a long way to ensure good service.

Since that time, a lot has changed for the cooperative telephone company - buried fiber optic service to the homes, touch-tone service (of course) private lines, and high-speed Internet service for all.

/Pete./

 

[kenn10]

In grade school, we toured our rural Virginia central office right after it was cut over from switchboard operators. It was a used North Electric NX2 crossbar switch. It was noisy and fascinating. I think that is what hooked me on telecom. We had 10-party party lines with phone ringers tuned to 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 hertz for selective ring with half on the tip side and the other half on the ring side. It could not do ANI for toll so when you dialed long distance, a TSPS operator always cut in with "What's your number." That switch was used until the early 80's when it was relaced with some boring digital switch.

 

[Samot]

We had IVR's in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They were called operators.

By operator you are referring to a telecom operator or a company switchboard operator or a receptionist? Because they were/are three different things. IVRs replaced the last and has nothing to do with the first. Company switchboard operators got replaced by PABX's since it automated routing allowing receptionists to handle call routing.

 

[kenn10]

By operator you are referring to a telecom operator or a company switchboard operator or a receptionist?

You are excessively pedantic. It was a small town. We had telco switchboard operators who knew everyone's business. And yes, there were corporate switchboard operators and receptionists. I wish we still had them. It was much easier to reach people and get information you wanted than using these ##@&! IVR's.

 

[wardmundy]

Lucky for our extended family, my aunt was a switchboard operator in Franklin, NC. On quiet days, she could patch in lots of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins for a chat. It was magical (and free) back in the day. Better yet, her twin daughters worked at the DQ down the street from their home. Nothing beats free ice cream!

 

[tycho]

Free conference calling! It took decades before that was replicated.