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Does anyone remember a red phone book marketed as the “talking phone book?” In my town in the 1990s, it had the unique feature of a free local number you could
by karmelapple 4y ago
Does anyone remember a red phone book marketed as the “talking phone book?”
In my town in the 1990s, it had the unique feature of a free local number you could dial and use to play games, get movie showtimes, find out the time, and more. It was almost like audio-only webpages you pulled up with a four digit code after initially dialing a regular phone number.
I would spend lots of time on there, typing in random codes to see if I could find an Easter egg. And I did.
I found a code - I think it may have been 9876 - that opened up a service where you could leave a short message that the next person could hear. Frequently it was nothing much, but sometimes it was … pretty strange, sometimes pretty entertaining.
Did anyone else stumble upon this strange corner of phone service, where you left a recording for strangers, and listened to what they left?
- aksss 4y agoNo, God only knows what that service was intended for. :D I do remember our town had a local number, 8463, that we could call to get current time and temperature played back to us.
- willcodeforfoo 4y agoI don't remember the leave-a-message one, but I do remember the dial in service. One day I went down to the local library and found an old phone book from the 90s and sure enough, it had all the codes. Here are some photos from the Toledo, OH Ameritech 1996-7 phone book if anyone else is curious: https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/YDs8iWXB/IMG_6908.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar... https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/vDsqiByY/IMG_6904.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar... https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/lbs0iE9Z/IMG_6903.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar... https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/QZsXiDPR/IMG_6902.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar... https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/JJsdiBLo/IMG_6901.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar... https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/marks/EbswiReB/IMG_6900.jpeg https://cdn.remarkedusercontent.com/file/remarked-prod/1/mar...
- post_break 4y agoFunny seeing Jerry Anderson, only to google him and see he stepped down 4 years ago. I wonder if our number was in that book.