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I was interested in phreaking when I was a kid. We had those coin-operated phone booths, and at some point, I figured that clicking the receiver hook with my fi

I was interested in phreaking when I was a kid. We had those coin-operated phone booths, and at some point, I figured that clicking the receiver hook with my finger was akin to dialing a number, but in this case, you didn't have to pay. Say you wanted to dial 42 - you'd quickly press the hook four times, then wait a couple of seconds, and press it two more times. Fun times. I remember a situation when my classmate and I were returning from school and I needed to call my parents. I told him, "Now I'll show you how to make a call for free." I started tapping the hook (while he was making fun of me), my mom picked up the phone, and I began talking to her. My friend mocked me, thinking I was talking to thin air, and asked for the receiver. He said, "Hello!", my mom replied... Well, there's no need to go into what happened next :-OOO

ljf 2y ago
I remember my father going away and putting a lock on the rotary dial phone - this meant you could only dial 999 I think - but my brother quickly showed him you could 'tap' out the number in the number in the way that you describe. I'm not sure who my dad was locking out - maybe we had lodgers at the time? Later we bought a 'fancy' answerphone that you could retrieve, save and delete messages from a remote phone by playing a tone down the line. It came with a special tone generating battery operated touchpad you could hold to a receiver to play a tone down the phone, as plenty of phones were not touch tone yet. I remember you could also use that to dial numbers some how - later a friend had a Casio watch that could also generate and 'dial' numbers for you. I tried from a payphone but it wouldn't work for me.
- stavros 2y ago
  Those tones were DTMF. Tapping out the number on the hook was how pulse dialing (the other dialing standard) worked. Pulse dialing was superseded by DTMF at some point, but switchboards supported both for a long time. That's why you could use your tone generator (or your mobile phone!) to dial, because that's literally the exact same way that your phone dialled.
  - itslennysfault 2y ago
    Worth adding that pulse dialing is how rotary phones worked. When you released the dial it flicked the hang up button each time a number passed it.

ljf 2y ago

I remember my father going away and putting a lock on the rotary dial phone - this meant you could only dial 999 I think - but my brother quickly showed him you could 'tap' out the number in the number in the way that you describe. I'm not sure who my dad was locking out - maybe we had lodgers at the time? Later we bought a 'fancy' answerphone that you could retrieve, save and delete messages from a remote phone by playing a tone down the line. It came with a special tone generating battery operated touchpad you could hold to a receiver to play a tone down the phone, as plenty of phones were not touch tone yet. I remember you could also use that to dial numbers some how - later a friend had a Casio watch that could also generate and 'dial' numbers for you. I tried from a payphone but it wouldn't work for me.

stavros 2y ago
Those tones were DTMF. Tapping out the number on the hook was how pulse dialing (the other dialing standard) worked. Pulse dialing was superseded by DTMF at some point, but switchboards supported both for a long time. That's why you could use your tone generator (or your mobile phone!) to dial, because that's literally the exact same way that your phone dialled.
- itslennysfault 2y ago
  Worth adding that pulse dialing is how rotary phones worked. When you released the dial it flicked the hang up button each time a number passed it.