4 ms·

My grandparents had a rotary phone and I always thought it was fun/neat to play around with (they'd unplug it first, obviously). I was about 8 years old when th

My grandparents had a rotary phone and I always thought it was fun/neat to play around with (they'd unplug it first, obviously). I was about 8 years old when they got rid of it so no idea if it's still "fun" to an adult.

b112 4y ago
I can very much see it as fun, when it is unusual. It isn't fun as a daily driver.
toast0 4y ago
I've had a rotary phone for about 5 years, but always a voip line and most ATAs don't handle pulse dialing well (some of mine say they can, but it doesn't work with my particular phone anyway), but I recently setup a real POTS line and it works there. It's kind of fun, but mandatory 1+ ten digit dialing makes it a lot more tedious. Even if you were somewhere without ten digit dialing, there's a lot more cross area code dialing these days.
- quantified 4y ago
  When 1-800- numbers were introduced, they were tedious to dial. You could see why NYC was 212, Chicago 312, LA 213, and so on. Yes, I was around for all that. I envied the houses with touch-tone.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    That's interesting. I'd assumed the USA would use the letters on the phone dial, since those are still used in advertising today but have fallen out of use in many other countries. In Britain, the area codes were originally allocated based on the letter corresponding to the number, except for London. 01_ London 021 Birmingham (B=2) 031 Edinburgh (E=3) 041 Glasgow (G=4) 051 Liverpool (L=5) 061 Manchester (M=6) with other cities taking two-letter codes: 0532 Leeds (LE = 53) 0742 Sheffield (SH = 74) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telephone_numbers_i... (impressively long article)
    - toast0 4y ago
      US area codes are a fixed three digits and initially had a rule that states which fit in a single area code would be X0Y, and those with multiple would be X1Y. When the area codes were made, AT&T already had usage data from operator connected long distance calling, so they chose the numbers to minimize dialing time. Within area codes, the first three digits indicate the telephone exchange, those used to be named based on the first two digits ex 555 KLondike-5 or 736 PEnnsylvania 6 [1]; these exchange names historically tended to have geographic meaning on a local level, but that wasn't always practical and when customer dialing happened, exchange names mostly disappeared, only to be heard from in older media. [1] you might know of this one from the Glenn Miller song, PEnnsylvania 6-5000, which was the number of a the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York; it's exchange was named for PEnn station, the area the exchange serves

b112 4y ago

I can very much see it as fun, when it is unusual. It isn't fun as a daily driver.

toast0 4y ago

I've had a rotary phone for about 5 years, but always a voip line and most ATAs don't handle pulse dialing well (some of mine say they can, but it doesn't work with my particular phone anyway), but I recently setup a real POTS line and it works there. It's kind of fun, but mandatory 1+ ten digit dialing makes it a lot more tedious. Even if you were somewhere without ten digit dialing, there's a lot more cross area code dialing these days.

quantified 4y ago
When 1-800- numbers were introduced, they were tedious to dial. You could see why NYC was 212, Chicago 312, LA 213, and so on. Yes, I was around for all that. I envied the houses with touch-tone.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  That's interesting. I'd assumed the USA would use the letters on the phone dial, since those are still used in advertising today but have fallen out of use in many other countries. In Britain, the area codes were originally allocated based on the letter corresponding to the number, except for London. 01_ London 021 Birmingham (B=2) 031 Edinburgh (E=3) 041 Glasgow (G=4) 051 Liverpool (L=5) 061 Manchester (M=6) with other cities taking two-letter codes: 0532 Leeds (LE = 53) 0742 Sheffield (SH = 74) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telephone_numbers_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_telephone_numbers_i... (impressively long article)
  - toast0 4y ago
    US area codes are a fixed three digits and initially had a rule that states which fit in a single area code would be X0Y, and those with multiple would be X1Y. When the area codes were made, AT&T already had usage data from operator connected long distance calling, so they chose the numbers to minimize dialing time. Within area codes, the first three digits indicate the telephone exchange, those used to be named based on the first two digits ex 555 KLondike-5 or 736 PEnnsylvania 6 [1]; these exchange names historically tended to have geographic meaning on a local level, but that wasn't always practical and when customer dialing happened, exchange names mostly disappeared, only to be heard from in older media. [1] you might know of this one from the Glenn Miller song, PEnnsylvania 6-5000, which was the number of a the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York; it's exchange was named for PEnn station, the area the exchange serves