Yeah, the beauty of simplicity... but OTOH, you had to dial all those phone numbers by hand, the quality for long distance calls was sometimes so bad that you h

Yeah, the beauty of simplicity... but OTOH, you had to dial all those phone numbers by hand, the quality for long distance calls was sometimes so bad that you had trouble understanding anything at all, when the phone rang, you had no idea who was calling (or who had called when you didn't get to the phone in time) etc. Newer technology is orders of magnitude more complicated, but it enables you to transmit not only voice, but also several Mbps of data over the same two thin telephone wires.