quote:

Originally posted by Southflorida-law:
Not that old, but I do remember my best friend's phone at his house growing up, they had a party line.

Dad worked for the Bell from 48 until the breakup. he was brought in to the Northeast just to get rid of party lines. Retired as a Regional Business Manager, Had all of Northeast PA out to Williamsport.

quote:

Originally posted by az4783054:
I remember listening for the number of rings to know if it our incoming call or someone else's. <snip>

My aunt & uncle lived in the country and were on a party line. They listened for the number of rings, and their duration (e.g., long-long-short) to know if a call was for them. But most everybody on the party line picked up most calls – to keep up with neighborhood news. Every pick-up caused the volume to drop a bit. And yes, there was a hand crank on the wooden wall-mounted phone to get the operator. How far we’ve come!

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
I remember my grandmother's cabin in VA being on a 3 or 4 way party line.

Remember having to dial a regular phone number for police/fire/ems.

I also grew up in a town where the first three numbers of the local prefix was the same for everyone, just had to know the last 4 digits.

That's about all I've got. Not quite old enough lol

Southwestern Bell in Texas got rid of party lines ~20 years ago. Until then, I know that if you were calling within at least the Mathis, Texas exchange, you could just dial the suffix.

In 1970s and early 80s I remember our dial and first touch tone phone system still worked on the 5 number dial. IE... number was 123-4567 you dialed 3-4567.

I was born in 1970

My oldest sister and her husband worked for “The Telephone Company”. Back then I believe AT&T was the largest employer in the country.
When AT&T was broken up and the regional companies started grabbing for more territory, there was a time in which it was said a politician could be elected for sure if he just promised to bring back AT&T, so confusing was it.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:

When AT&T was broken up and the regional companies started grabbing for more territory, there was a time in which it was said a politician could be elected for sure if he just promised to bring back AT&T, so confusing was it.

'Twas the early 1980s, when the consent decree that broke up the Bell System went into effect.

I had departed Bell Labs for greener pastures years before that, but I was brought back in on contract. There was a ton of software development to be done to interface Bell System switching systems with other vendors' equipment, and those of us who were experienced with the AT&T systems did a lot of that work.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
This required the use of area codes, and required a pre-fix of 1 if the call was station-to-station, or 0 prefix if operator intervention would be required

AH HA that was a long standing question I had.

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
This required the use of area codes, and required a pre-fix of 1 if the call was station-to-station, or 0 prefix if operator intervention would be required

AH HA that was a long standing question I had.

That was back 60 years ago, maybe a bit more, when DDD (Direct Distance Dialing) was in its infancy.

In those days, when "long distance" calling was expensive, it was not uncommon to call person-to-person. This was a call for a specific person. An operator would intervene when the called telephone was answered and announce that the call was for Fred Fnart (or whoever). If Fred was not there the call would not be completed and there was no charge. If Fred was available, the charge for the call would start when Fred came on the line. Since operator intervention was required for this type of call, the calling subscriber would dial a 0 followed by the ten digit number. There was a three-second timer in the system; if the calling subscriber dialed 0 and then nothing else, the three-second timer would expire and the call would be directed to an operator for complete manual handling. These person-to-person calls did cost a bit more than a simple station-to-station call which used a 1 prefix, but there was no charge at all if the desired party was not available. There was a very common scam whereby a caller would place a person-to-person call for a non-existing recipient. The phony name that was asked for would convey a message, maybe something like a "safe arrival" call, or possibly something more sophisticated. This was used to pass information without paying for the call.

A 0 prefix was also used to dial a collect call, wherein the operator would intervene when the called telephone was answer, announce the collect call, and verify that the charges would be accepted by the called party.

Those types of operator-assisted calls disappeared when long distance charges went away in recent times.

quote:

There was a very common scam whereby a caller would place a person-to-person call for a non-existing recipient. The phony name that was asked for would convey a message, maybe something like a "safe arrival" call, or possibly something more sophisticated. This was used to pass information without paying for the call.

The later version of this was to place a collect call from a pay phone to wherever with a brief message as the person placing the call. More than once in high school and college, I may have placed a collect call to home from a pay phone claiming to be the person “hey I’m at X location, pick me up” at a rapid clip, which, of course the person declined to accept the charges for, and then showed up where I needed a ride from. The last time I remember anyone doing this, was probably around 2005 or so.

The oldest I can recall is pre-911 and only having one phone in the home, in the kitchen, with a long enough cord to take it to the bathroom to talk to your girlfriend. When my neighbor cut her toes off with the lawn mower, we had to dial the number for EMS and 911 wasn’t around then. V-Tail has much cooler memories.

quote:

When my neighbor cut her toes off with the lawn mower, we had to dial the number for EMS and 911 wasn’t around then. V-Tail has much cooler memories.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Yep. I am waiting for the time Vtail cut the telegraph lines to the fort.

My dad's parents had a party line in Millersville PA as late as the late '60s. It was unusual then, at least in me experience.

quote:

pay phone

In the early sixties we used $.25 pay phones to call from the college dorms. If you dropped a nickel & slammed the coin return button at the instant the nickel dropped thru it would be recognized as a quarter. If you were really good a penny would work.

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Florida now has 17 area codes: 239, 305, 321, 352, 386, 407, 561, 727, 754, 772, 786, 813, 850, 863, 904, 941, and 954.

To me, 'real' area codes will only have a 1 or a 0 in the middle.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Florida now has 17 area codes: 239, 305, 321, 352, 386, 407, 561, 727, 754, 772, 786, 813, 850, 863, 904, 941, and 954.

To me, 'real' area codes will only have a 1 or a 0 in the middle.

Yes, that was the original concept. 0 if one area code would cover the whole state, or 1 if there was more than one area code for the state.

Areas that were expected to get a lot of traffic had low digits, so they could be dialed faster with a rotary dial. 212 for NYC, 312 for Chicago, 213 for Los Angeles, etc.

With our insatiable appetite for phone numbers, we exhausted the pool of available numbers with B-digit 0 or 1.

My brother was a telephone lineman and he had so many spare phones it was comical, when I was about 13 he taught me how to install one,

after that I use to raid his truck whenever he would stop by, I hooked up so many phones for my girlfriends I was known as the phone guy, it was allot of fun, I'm sure illegal at the time back in 73.

South Dakota is also one of the few remaining states with just one area code.

quote:

Originally posted by XLT:
My brother was a telephone lineman and he had so many spare phones it was comical, when I was about 13 he taught me how to install one,

after that I use to raid his truck whenever he would stop by, I hooked up so many phones for my girlfriends I was known as the phone guy, it was allot of fun, I'm sure illegal at the time back in 73.

back in the day, the phone company would try to figure out how many phones you had by how much current was used during ringing. And if they thought you had an extra phone you didn't pay for, it was a big deal.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

if they thought you had an extra phone

In the mid 1900s, one black rotary dial "500 set" came with basic residential service.



All phones were supplied by The Phone Company (Ma Bell). There was an upcharge for each additional phone. When color was introduced, there was an upcharge for that. New exciting stuff came along, like touch-tone dialing, Princess phones, etc. There was an upcharge for each of these.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

if they thought you had an extra phone

In the mid 1900s, one black rotary dial "500 set" came with basic residential service.



All phones were supplied by The Phone Company (Ma Bell). There was an upcharge for each additional phone. When color was introduced, there was an upcharge for that. New exciting stuff came along, like touch-tone dialing, Princess phones, etc. There was an upcharge for each of these.

My grandfather rented a phone for long, long after it was required. Then after that, his phone still looked like that one. He actually paid extra at one point for rotary vs touchtone service. He now has cordless phones. I am pretty sure he also owned the last B&W TV in America too.