31–40 of 56 posts
I grew up with no choice in this matter. Then there was a period when "touch" dialing was available for an exhorbitant premium. There's something so Brooklyn / Portland about wanting to relive this for the romance. It sucked.
A fun fact about pulse dial is that you can dial a digit d by quickly tapping the switch hook d times (zero is 10 taps). This is useful for dialing from a phone with the dial intentionally disabled or removed.
Why would a phone with the dial intentionally disabled be connected to anything?
Going back a little further it was common not to have a dial at all, with the operator being signalled immediately, literally patching your call manually through a series of other locations.
I'm usually good at avoiding visual distractions but I gave up trying to read this.
I'm usually good at avoiding visual distractions but I gave up trying to read this.
yeah sorry about that, I've removed the cool walking background sprite. I'm going for a 90's theme, where eveyrthing looked awful but felt really personal
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've shared this story before, but you may find it amusing: Back in 1996, I was living in Almaden Valley (South San Jose) and we had underground utilities. We also lived on top of an underground stream. After a rainstorm, water got in and intermittently shorted out the phone line. It was clicking like crazy! I was on my cool new Motorola StarTAC talking with Pacific Bell to report the problem. Then I heard a loud kno…
Heard a similar story about why the german emergency number is 110 and not the easier to memorize/type 111: The latter is 3 clicks on the line with generous spacing requirements, the former 12 clicks. So 111 would be much more prone to misdialing than 110. (I guess the international number 112 is a compromise. Still a low number of clicks, but I suppose the timing would be more difficult to get right?)
Three reasons for that:
1) Unlike most other countries, the Swedish dials had the number nine, and not zero, at the end. So "90 000" was considered easy to remember and easy to hit, even in the dark.
2) "90 000" was relatively easy to call by hand using the switch hook, on a telephone without a functioning number plate. (Swedish system had 1 click for zero, not 10.)
3) The statistical probability of a loose contact or some other type of electrical fault producing the sequence "90 000" is small.
I'm usually good at avoiding visual distractions but I gave up trying to read this.
yeah sorry about that, I've removed the cool walking background sprite. I'm going for a 90's theme, where eveyrthing looked awful but felt really personal
You succeeded. I was transported back to better times.
I'll take that genuine Old Web energy over a Substack or Reddit post any day. Thanks for being yourself and not just another drone. <3
I'm usually good at avoiding visual distractions but I gave up trying to read this.
Check if your browser has "Reader mode". On Firefox there is a button in URL bar or you can press Ctrl+Alt+R.
A fun fact about pulse dial is that you can dial a digit d by quickly tapping the switch hook d times (zero is 10 taps). This is useful for dialing from a phone with the dial intentionally disabled or removed.
I've shared this story before, but you may find it amusing: Back in 1996, I was living in Almaden Valley (South San Jose) and we had underground utilities. We also lived on top of an underground stream. After a rainstorm, water got in and intermittently shorted out the phone line. It was clicking like crazy! I was on my cool new Motorola StarTAC talking with Pacific Bell to report the problem. Then I heard a loud kno…
I grew up with no choice in this matter. Then there was a period when "touch" dialing was available for an exhorbitant premium. There's something so Brooklyn / Portland about wanting to relive this for the romance. It sucked.
In the 90s there was a charge on my mom's phone bill for touch tone dialing. I called up to dispute the charges but the phone company wouldn't have any of it so I had them remove the "service" and they warned me that she wouldn't be able to dial out any more. I flipped a switch on her phone to simulate pulse dialing and a few months later switched it back. She was never charged again.