Comment on Phonebooks

• WoahWoah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

  How do you do that with only five fingers?? I guess that makes sense that the was such little time to dial it. Like you put each finger in the holes and then spin the whole thing? How does it figure out which… wait, then how would you do repeated numbers? Or did numbers never repeat…? I’m confused.

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  • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You dialled by putting a finger in each number hole one at a time, dragging each one to the stop. When I was a kid our town’s phone numbers had just four digits, didn’t take long to dial.

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    • WoahWoah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Your number had what now?? Wow. Maybe you mean five? I was reading a Times article that they changed the four digit codes in 1930, but maybe that wasn’t standardized across the country. I’ve learned more about phone history than I ever expected to in my life. 🤣

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      • MrsDoyle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I’m from New Zealand originally. Small town in a small country. The time zone joke back then was, “If it’s 5pm in Sydney, it’s 1956 in Auckland.”

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  • jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    No, do it sequentially. To dial 515-2400 you put your finger in the 5, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 1, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 5, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 2, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 4, drag it to the stop, then release. Next put your finger in the 0, drag it to the stop, then release. Finally put your finger in the 0 again, drag it to the stop, then release.

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    • WoahWoah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      OMG. Why would they put a timer on it then?? That seems like it would take forever.

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      • jqubed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        It did take forever. Rotary phones work by sending clicks down the phone line that automation equipment listens to. If clicks came too fast the equipment wouldn’t understand it correctly. This was one of the big improvements the touch tone phone brought: it was much faster to dial. Instead of clicks each button generated a tone at a specific frequency and the automated switching equipment could interpret it much faster. At least some of the early phones had a switch to make them send clicks instead, in case the local phone company didn’t support tones yet.

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  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    You mean to say you’ve never even seen a move with someone using a rotary phone?

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