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Rotary Cellphone
- rekabis 7y agoThere is a classic 60s/70s era rotary phone, vaguely similar to a princess phone, where the dialling mechanism is inside an extra-beefy handset. Not a lineman’s phone, but a regular consumer’s phone. If a unit like this could be shoehorned into one of those, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThe Western Electric Trimline Phone, available in both touch tone and rotary dial. It also supplied the dial in this build. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimline_telephone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimline_telephone https://img0.etsystatic.com/047/1/5765656/il_570xN.731185188_rsx3.jpg https://img0.etsystatic.com/047/1/5765656/il_570xN.731185188...
- xupybd 7y agoThat's amazing. It's beautifuly well built. I don't know how people can have the talent, time and energy to do this as a hobby.
- nyir 7y agoLove this so much. The small display is also definitely something I'd like on a phone simply to display small information bits that then don't need the full powered up display. On that note is there a good conversion (as in, make it into a USB keyboard) write-up for mechanical typewriters? I've seen one commercial kit before, but didn't follow through so far, even though I've got two still lying around.
- dredmorbius 7y agoThere's USB Typewriter, though they're on hiatus. https://www.usbtypewriter.com/collections/typewriters https://www.usbtypewriter.com/collections/typewriters
- gandalfian 7y agoCool, though having recently used a rotary phone to navigate a phone menu I'm glad they died out.
- rekabis 7y ago> used a rotary phone to navigate a phone menu That’s impossible. Rotary phones use pulse dialling exclusively, but phone menus/trees require the tone dialling of push button and touch-screen phones. I have never heard of any phone menu/tree, even at the dawn of their implementation in the late 80s when rotary phones were still common, supporting pulse based dialling.
- banana_giraffe 7y agoPulse to Tone converters are a thing. It's possible to use a rotary phone with one on things that expect DTMF tones, which is pretty much the entire world now. Though, honestly, if you're the type to use a pulse to tone converter to keep your pulse phone alive and in use, you probably enjoy using it on a modern phone tree.
- WorldMaker 7y agoOr you paid way too much in AT&T equipment fees for decades before the breakup of Ma Bell and very much were going to get your money's worth for that $1000+ phone. My grandfather obstinately didn't want to replace a kitchen rotary simply for fun sunk cost economic reasons.
- huebomont 7y agoThis is great, but the arguments about how this is Actually Very Practical And Not At All Just A Fun Concept are laughable.