Not even 30 and I feel ancient right now.
Comment on Phonebooks
MegaUltraChicken@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Mid 30s and I feel ancient right now.
Fosheze@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 6 hours ago
Yeah, OP might just be a dumbass.
wallybeavis@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Mid 40s, and I too feel old now - at first I thought OP was setting us up for a joke. The local phone company still delivered phone books to everyone in my city until a few years ago.
I think it was an old legal requirement for any phone company providing landline services to also provide phonebooks. Unfortunately most weren’t even recycled, they were either burned in backyard firepits, or just thrown out
radix@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
You want to feel really old?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok
wallybeavis@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Rotary phones weren’t even that long ago?!??! I still remember the swooop, click-click-click-click sound, oh, and the ear shattering ringing bells. I am happy that in our lifetime we’ve come so far that kids don’t understand tools from just a couple decades ago. I remember my father showing me a stack of punch cards he used at work and warning me not to touch them - but what I also know is, that those kids better get the hell off my damn lawn!
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BackOnMyBS@lemmy.autism.place 4 hours ago
Fun fact: You could dial without even using the rotary. In a morse-code-like fashion, quickly click the hang-up knob the number you want with a pause in-between numbers. So if you were calling 558-9151 (remember 7 digit numbers‽), you’d do (c = click):
c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c
c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c
c
c-c-c-c-c
c
illi@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
Man rotary phones were the best
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 hours ago
I had one in my room! Such a good feel to it. Same with picking up and hanging up!
This was in the early 2000s, btw. They were already a relics, but landlines were still commonly used when I was in high school, so and it had such a handsome look to it and felt great to use. I have long thought that a product that would do incredibly well would be a cell phone charging dock where you put your phone in and while it’s charging it just acts like a landline rotary phone. The user experience is very, very gratifying, and if you’ve ever tried to hold a call while your phone is plugged into the wall you know how much better a solid headset with a coil wire would feel than that.
chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 5 hours ago
Hey, they did a good job, and no one was being mean about it. That’s nice.
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
I would probably have similar difficulties… I can’t even tell what they were doing wrong and then suddenly doing right. I do know the basic motion because I’ve seen it in shows I think, like you spin it around… but I never really thought about how precisely you do that. And you only had a certain amount of time to dial it?? That’s crazy.
I will say I would have figured out you need to pick it up first sooner. But even my office phone I dial the number, see it on the little screen, hit send, and then lift up the receiver if I don’t want to use speaker phone.
andrewrgross@slrpnk.net 4 hours ago
They were starting by putting a finger in zero and then dragging to the number. And for zero they were dragging all the way to the stop.
You’re supposed to dial by putting a finger in each number hole and then dragging to the stop. So they dialed zero correctly, but only zero.
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
No joke! I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a phone book. How would they even fit? Seems like they would have been enormous.
I did see a payphone in a restaurant once but it didn’t work. I saw another one outside of a gas station on a road trip in the south. That one had a dial tone, but I think you had to pay more to call anyone we knew, so we just took selfies pretending to use it.
brygphilomena@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Residential listings were “white pages” and businesses were “yellow pages.”
Yes, they were big, printed on very thin paper, with small typeface.
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WoahWoah@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
OMG 🤣🤣🤣
Geekocracy@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Wow! I grew up with these. (Nostalgia intensifies!)
wallybeavis@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Did the voice on the payphone say: You must please deposit 25 cents to place your call LOL I think that’s engrained in my memory
Fun fact:
Once touch tone phones became the norm there were actually games you could play by just calling a number. There was also a number you could call and get the local time and temperature. Oh, and lets not forget Mr. MoviePhone!
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I don’t remember a voice, but maybe! I just remember the tone because we were excited that it worked. Someone came out of the gas station and saw us taking pictures and stuff and they told us that it’s there because until recently (and even still) cell coverage was really bad or nonexistent in the area, so a lot of people still used landlines.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
One use for a phone book was to prop a little kid in a regular chair so they could eat at the table. Like, after they outgrew a baby highchair and could balance on their own. Also you could prove your strength by ripping one in half.
Listings were usually under the name of the adult male, for safety as well as sexism. A woman living alone would probably use just her initials for safety.
illi@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
They were quite big, but used super thin paper and small font. There were books thicker still, but still the phrase “thick as a phone book” was used.
There were also Yellow Pages (same format as phone books, but entirely yellow) which listed businesess and stuff.
Pre-internet these were the household essentials.
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
The 1900s were crazy
altima_neo@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
Yeah we were still getting them up to line 2010 or so, even though we haven’t had a land line active in my house since I moved in.