Earlier quoted context omitted.
You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. So think of the cradle switches - what "hangs up" the phone - as a button, and you just click that button (quickly) for '1' and then you pause and hit it twice in very rapid succession for '2' ... You need to be on a POTS line to do this, of course, but it will work even today. Even if you have no dialing mechanism, you can dial the…
I was very surprised a couple of weeks ago, making a call on a fixed-wireless 4G modem with a phone jack on it, that it supported pulse dialing. (The handset plugged into it happened to be set for pulse, you see.)
I wonder if something like that would get implemented to address a historical regulatory requirement.