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Sure. Switchboards were actual plugboards (often using the 1/4" jack, which was invented for this application). The operator would plug her headset into the use
by leoc 7y ago
Sure. Switchboards were actual plugboards (often using the 1/4" jack, which was invented for this application). The operator would plug her headset into the user's socket to talk to him or her, then unplug the headset and (for a local call, or an internal call on a private exchange) connect the caller's socket to the callee's using cables.
This is one of the odd things about the fad for rotary-shaming today's teenagers: the rotary-dial system hasn't even been around all that long. Bell produced how-to-dial-your-new-rotary-phone films in the mid-'thirties and the mid-'fifties https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/introducing-the-dial-telephone-films-from-1936-1954 https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/introducing-the-dial-te... https://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/5/30/AT&T-Archives-Introduction-Dial-Telephone https://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2012/5/30/AT&T-Ar... , to say nothing of the rest of the world. There are undoubtedly still some people who are so old that they still aren't comfortable with rotary dialing. (In fact, I read someone on Twitter claiming to know some old English women who don't know how to dial a telephone, as they always used to get their husbands to do it for them. I'm guessing they may be pretty posh old ladies, as the early-twentieth-century public-school set had a reputation for being technophobic.)
- grawprog 7y ago> some old English women who don't know how to dial a telephone, as they always used to get their husbands to do it for them. My grandma was Scottish but she was like that. She eventually learned but, when I was a kid she'd always have me or my sister or cousins dial for her because my grandpa had always done it for her. I'm pretty sure she always knew how, I think she just didn't want to or like doing it. She'd always make this big act about how it was too hard to figure out though, would make attempts at dialling, dial the wrong number a bunch then tell us to do it but it always seemed like she was just doing it on purpose.
- magduf 7y agoThis sounds like a guy I used to know who told me about how, when he got married, he'd intentionally pour a bunch of bleach in the laundry and ruin the whole load, just so that his wife would forbid him from ever doing laundry again and do it herself.