Memories of Rotary/Dial phones

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Hello everybody,

Remember when we couldn't buy our own phones, but had to have it installed by Ma Bell?

oh yeah. there're probably still some old people still paying monthly for a phone.

My house was built around 1960. There is a yellow rotary phone on my kitchen wall

When I moved here in 2002, my then 12 yo son looked at that phone and wanted to know where the redial and mute buttons were. I had some explaining to do.

Someday in the not too distant future, land lines will be a distant memory

Yes, I remember them too.
Sad isnt it.
Were getting so old, and you know you are when you remember such things that others hardly ever reflect upon or consider.
The future is coming fast, even for our own children.

The dial tones were so irritating, too. Not Aspie-friendly. Now they're a nicer whirrr

I have an old one that I use when the power goes out.

My parents have one that they still have out for that reason & because mom likes antique stuff. They live in south Louisiana in an small unheard of town between two cities near the end of the power line. Their power's out for a couple weeks after a bad hurricane. They have a generator but of coarse wouldn't want to charge their cell phones on it because of power spikes. Mom wouldn't mind canceling the home phone service thou because a lot of the calls they get on it are cr@p; auto-dinars, businesses trying to solicit even thou their on the Do Not Call List or scammers. They use their cells for long distance calls.

I remember those old phones. My family had one in the first house that we lived in. I loved the whir of them as I dialed my friends' numbers.

party lines. I still remember our first phone number, circa 1962, but always had spies on line listen to each other conversation.

In 1988 there were still party lines here.About a year later that was a thing of the past.

When I saw the title of this thread I thought to myself, rotary/dial phones didn't have a memory lol.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkuirEweZvM[/youtube]

Apart from manipulating the rotary dial, I had forgotten that these day things like lifting the receiver to get a dial tone, and even knowing what a dial tone, is foreign. Re: the video - so funny the kids had trouble with the concept of a busy signal!

Since everyone has caller ID now,gone are the days of the glorious crank call.

Pssh like us kids don't know how to get around caller ID

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vlu_sxd2TI[/youtube]

I know people who still use rotary dial phones. The problem with them is you can't access touch tone services with them.

Am I getting old?

The first public phone I remember making a call on cost me 5 cents and it didn't even have a dial, only a mouthpiece and crank.

denny

My strongest memory of rotary dial phones is hating when a phone number had a 0 or 9 in it because it took so long to dial. But there was nothing more satisfying than hanging up on someone on those old phones. Hitting "end call" just doesn't have the same effect.