Ever use a rotary dial?

[pokerfan]

ETA: This doesn't count:

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear pokerfan...

I grew up with them!

Yup, I'm older than dirt...

:P

[murielm99]

4. Peggy, when I was a kid, we had a phone number that was

something like MA6-1234. The "MA" stood for Main. The operator said, "Number, please," and we told her.

When I was about ten, some phone company guy came in and installed a rotary dial on our phone. No more operator!

My brothers and I had so much fun dialing all our friends that our mom threatened to cut off our phone privileges. The novelty wore off, and my index finger stopped being red and sore. LOL!

I live in a rural area. When my husband and I were dating, more than thirty years ago, he still had a party line. I know that it was uncommon then, in the 1970's. His rural phone company was one of the last to give up the party line system.

Now I feel naked if I happen to leave the house without my cell phone.

[kentauros]

5. I only feel "naked" when I don't have my seatbelt on

;)

Leaving without my cell phone doesn't bother me at all. I enjoy not being on that leash :D

[surrealAmerican]

44. I've got a song for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMOxM4rv2RQ

[pokerfan]

6. We had a party line into the eighties

My older siblings grew up with a manual exchange where you had to ask an operator to connect you to 'the party to whom who are calling.'

I remember local ad jingles from the sixties: when you need coal or oil, call Boyle... Fairfax 8-1521.

Coal? Fairfax? :wtf:

[murielm99]

9. Everybody who grew up around Chicago in the sixties and

seventies remembers HUdson 3-2700.

It was for Boushelle Rug Company. The advertising jingle had a singer with a deep voice, and the rhythm of the jingle was catchy.

I know I am not the only one here who remembers the jingle.

[GoCubsGo]

26. Yes, and who can forget...

...588-2300--Empire. Another carpet company. Go figure.

[ThatsMyBarack]

33. I sure do!

So do many others!:

http://fuzzymemories.tv/

;)

[old mark]

15. Yeah, we had the old black dial phones - they actually belonged to the

phone company-they were not yours! You paid a small monthly fee to permanently lease them.
We also had an old house that had a coal furnace, and a guy who came around a few times in the winter to drop a ton or so of coal down a chute into a coal bin in out basement. Had to clean out the ashes and had a separate steel can to put them in that would get set out with the trash every week. They HAD to be in a steel can because they may have been hot and could start a fire.

That was in the early-mid 1950's.

mark

[surrealAmerican]

45. Even well into the '70s the phone company owned all the equipment.

Not only that, but there was no legal way to use a phone they didn't own. My father actually made a phone out of spare parts. The phone company wouldn't let it be used over "their" lines. We used it anyway, but if they had found out, they would have confiscated it.

[old mark]

59. Talk about "socialism".....nt

[kentauros]

2. Yep, grew up with them.

We went to the new "touch tone" sometime in the 70s ;)

Of course TPC (The Phone Company) owned all of the phones back then. There was no such thing as a "cell" phone. Oh, the horror! The horror! :P


Oh yeah, rotaries were much harder to Phreak

[murielm99]

3. I think we still have an old rotary phone upstairs.

It is a princess phone. It is still in working condition, but under one of the beds. We put an older touch phone up there and got a newer one downstairs.

In a few years your poll may not be about who has used a rotary phone. It may well be about, "Do you have, or have you ever used a land line?"

[PJPhreak]

52. The only phone I currently have is a land line,

Cell service out here sux!

our 3-G Internet is also named "BoonieNet"

[Petrushka]

7. Rotary phone, black, rented from phone company, 8-party line, no private lines available till 1988.

Ah, yes!

In the West Virginia boonies, rural party line phone service cost more than private phone service in the nearest city . . . I think we were paying some kind of "mileage" in addition to the rental for the phone with a "ringer" for a 8-party line somehow divided into two 4-party lines for better service . . . if you could have called it "service", considering how seldom we were able to use the phone when at least two other households on the same line were tying it up for hours.

We once asked the phone company to please put a phonebooth along the road somewhere out front . . . to not only keep stranded motorists from banging on our door at an ungodly hour of the night but, also, to make it unnecessary to listen to the all-day phone-ringing and ringing for other people on the line when we, ourselves, could have been doing just fine by spending one single dime in such a phonebooth, making the sum of all the calls we'd usually need to make in a month!

"Our" phone looked like this one:




Edited to add:
It must have been in 1940 or 1941 that our family had a phone installed . . . and my mother used it to take down and deliver telegrams for Western Union during the war. I remember the phone-number: 374-R.

[ThomCat]

10. You were being charged extra because your rate-zone was so rural.

In urban areas that were already heavily cabled, they could add service cheaply. To get to you they needed to first build out hundreds of miles of backbone cable and provide service to everyone between the city and you.

So they jacked up the price to cover the cost of all the extra cable they had to gradually put in place to reach you. And because they could get away with charging you more.

Being a monopoly, Ma Bell could pretty much do whatever they wanted and charge whatever they wanted.

Can you imagine any phone company today telling you that you had to rent your telephone, and pay a rental charge high enough to buy a phone outright every few months? There was no legitimate reason for it except monopoly greed.

[Petrushka]

14. We had a quarter-mile of frontage on our farm that the phone company dug up to bury those cables.

After the phone company had paid the farmer (who sold us our farm) a whole dollar for the use of his property to lay their cables---and having the phone company workmen assure him they'd leave the land as they found it after burying the cables---the farmer ended up needing to hand-fill in and re-seed the mess AT&T left behind. So, years later, when he was building a stock-pond and his back-hoe severed cable (it wasn't buried as deeply as was supposed), it's little wonder that farmer felt, as he said, "...as pleased as peaches!"


Edited to add:
We weren't paying "mileage" from the nearest city, our countyseat, which is 7 miles to the south. For whatever reason (excuse to charge even more?), our phone exchange was from a larger city, 12 miles to the west, and in the next county. :shrug: Oh, well . . . last year, I sold the farm to a young family who deal quite nicely with phone-service out that way . . . cell-phones! (Plus, the young pappy works for Verizon.)

[LostInAnomie]

8. My Grandparents used to have one all the way into the 90's.

I always thought it was cool to call my parents with it when I was at their house. Big, black, heavy thing. I bet it weighted 10 lbs.

[Rhiannon12866]

11. My mother still has one like this upstairs:

[elleng]

12. SURE! MAin 5-6521!!!!

> '54.

[proteus_lives]

13. Grandma's house had one.

Last time I saw one.

[asjr]

16. I remember our first phone. It was the

stand-up kind and when you took the earpiece off an operator would come on and ask What number please? And the numbers were in double digits.

[Ineeda]

17. I kind of miss that click-click-click sound

when the dial rotated.

[blogslut]

31. Me too

I especially loved the sound and feel of those old black ones that had a metal rotary thingy.

[Paper Roses]

18. Some of us old timers remember when rotary was an option.

We had crank phones when we were kids out in the country. Party line too.

I still remember our old number. 422R4. 422 was the number, 4 rings meant the call was for your house. By the time I was 10 or so, we got a rotary phone. Remember that number too. 7 digits. None of the area code or dial 1 first business. Still had a party line and the woman living up the street would listen in. Drove my mother nuts. Eventually my folks had enough of that and paid for a private line. It was a big luxury then.

[seemunkee]

19. Still have one

It's in that pink fleshy color
like this one

[GoCubsGo]

27. And, I thought my old Trimline phone was an antique

They still sell them. I refuse to give mine up. It was the only thing that worked when I lost power during an ice storm years ago. The cordless ones don't work without electricity.

[last_texas_dem]

20. I still used one from time to time until three or four years ago

My parents had one in the kitchen that finally went under around 2005.

They bought it in the early eighties when they lived outside of the city limits in an area that wasn't equipped for touchtone phones. It held up for around twenty-five years; during the same time period, they went through more touchtone/cordless phones than I can count!

I have to admit- I got a little bummed out the day that phone finally went out.

[Highway61]

21. GLencourt 3-2876

With a party line to boot.

[MorningGlow]

22. Still have one!

We keep meaning to connect it (our old house has several phone jacks attached to the baseboards). It's from the 40s--huge, black, weighs 10 tons. My mom still has one in her bedroom--still uses it when the battery dies in her cordless, or if someone catches her still asleep, of course. It's from the '70s and--I shit you not--avocado!

I remember, when I was little, longing for a push-button phone like my friends had, but my parents would never get one. That was back when the phone company gave (well, lent) you a phone, and it cost a little bit extra each month to lease a "touch-tone" phone. Made it impossible to win a radio contest, I can clearly recall that! :D I used to dial six numbers, and when the DJ said "call now!" I'd dial the seventh and hope for the best. Never did work all that well, though. x(
Damn, I'm old. :rofl:

[peekaloo]

24. I have one that is wired into the wall.

My parents' old house from the '60's. Can't call out but it does on occasion emit a feeble brrr-rrrinnnng. Bastard phone company wants $150 to "redesign" the outlet.

[Wapsie B]

23. Yes, soon after they did away with the Pony Express.

[bigwillq]

25. Yes, I've used one (nt)

[logosoco]

28. I remember these very well. My best friend had a 9 in her number

and those always took forever, because the dial had to get all the way back. My kids and I saw one at a yard sale, I asked them if they knew how it worked. Needless to say they thought it was pretty "lame".

[dr.strangelove]

29. Still use one

The "kitchen" phone is an old rotary phone thats been in the house since long before I was born. My wife and I make fun of it, but we kind of like it.
We have cordless "touch tone" phones that cover the whole house, but we use that rotary all the time when we are on the phone cooking or cleaning up.

[Common Sense Party]

30. How many people ever used a party line?

[Renew Deal]

32. I have forwarded this thread to AARP

Your membership cards are on the way. :evilgrin:

[Arkansas Granny]

34. Sure have. We also had eight parties on our line.

[Akoto]

35. I'm 24, and I remember having one as a kid. n/t

[Tommy_Carcetti]

36. Rotary phones remind me of my grandmother...

...she always preferred them to the push button phones.

I still love the "fbbttt, fbbttt, fbbttt" sound they made.

[rurallib]

37. Not only grew up with the black standard phone company-owned phone

with the dial, but saw our telephone number grow from 3 numbers to ten(491 to XXX-337-4491).
As noted by others the phone was black. But it was even more restrictive than that. The cord to the wall was short so the phone stand was right next to the phone box entrance to the house. And there was one phone. Only the rich had extension phones. So you went to the phone and usually stood when you talked since older homes were not set up for a phone.
When colors came in, they cost extra, also. the 'princess' type phones were extra also. If you wanted a longer cord, that was extra.
And long distance was really expensive. My mother's twin lived in Arizona, we lived in Iowa. They would speak for about 10 minutes each month and that would more than double the phone bill. That was a thorn in my Dad's side. He didn't want to stop their visits, but it really cost.

One other thing - the coal cinders reference in another post - they were used around here as a road topper. I had a cinder road on one side of our house. And that is where I learned to ride a bike. And it hurt like hell. I learned to stay up quickly.

[doc03]

38. Rotary dial, I remember telling the operator the name

of the party you wanted. I remember visiting a relative in West Virginia, they had what they called the farmers line. The wires were strung on the fence posts from one farm to the other and they used crank phones no operator. Every neighbor had a ring code, you would crank it two cranks than one crank (a long and a short) for the Smiths and so on..

[SacredCow]

39. I still have one....

The coolest phone EVER:





I have my Mom's, but I don't have a land line anymore, so it's mostly for decoration.

[CatholicEdHead]

40. Yes I have

they were the 70's maroon and gold colors (separate phones). I think I still have a working one somewhere around here, not currently hooked up.

[MineralMan]

41. Still have a couple of 'em. I'm a certifiable phone geek.

I even have an old oak wall phone in the kitchen, and it still works, although it's pretty hard to make calls from it. I can do it, though, and have won bets with people, who don't believe that it's possible. I have a stool in front of it, and sometimes answer that phone. It's really funny to get someone else to answer it. They can't figure out that they have to hold the receiver up to their ear and talk into the microphone on the box.

I have a candlestick phone from the 30's, with a dial in the base, too, plus an old black dial phone in the bedroom for those late night calls.

When I grew up, my little town didn't have dial service at all. Until I was about 15, when I wanted to talk to my father at work, I had to pick up the phone, wait for the operator to say, "Number, please," then say "42, please." They finally got dial service to the town around 1960. Our house number was 78.

I am a geezer.

[Kali]

42. I would probably still be using one but I need the line for the computer

:P :eyes: and that was still a party line (although no other parties on it) in the late 90's when we went on-line. We couldn't make several modems work and finally the phone company figured it out. I well remember the multiple rings - ours was one long single, there were at least 3 others I can remember.

The comments above about only having one phone - in a common area - and having to stand for your short conversation, are coming back to my memory as well.

The feed store we go to in town still has one - he even got several replacements from customers after the store burned down a few years ago. I still have one of those 40's style heavy black jobs (hell I even have a crank phone) that can be used, but like I said, I need the line for computer connection.

(thought I had pix of my old phones in photobucket but don't see them, too long to upload right now)

[pokerfan]

46. We had to stand to use our phone as well

They had simply mounted the dial phone in place of the of the original crank one. Since it was an eighty-party line, you tended to keep the conversations short so it wasn't that big of a deal. Usually you would hear one of the neighbors pick up (along with a brief burst of ambient noise from the third party) and then hang up when they realized the line was in use. That was generally your cue to get off the phone.

[NV Whino]

43. Yes

And it was hell on long fingernails.

[kayakjohnny]

47. Yes, used them a lot growing up in 1960's Florida.

My parents had a black one that must've weight 6 pounds. It was fun to call people with 8's, 9's and 0's because your finger gets the free ride back around.

[marzipanni]

48. We have one rotary phone, one corded touch tone phone

I bought a cheap touch tone phone so we can "press 1,2,3 or 4" for different options when calling offices.
My son's high school principal makes occasional "robo calls" to announce events at the school, etc. At the end of of his recording a voice says "press 1 if you want to hear this message repeated". Usually my son answers so he listens to the recording on the rotary phone then I run to the other phone and press 1 so I can hear it.

[Odin2005]

49. My parents had one when I was little.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

50. Hell, yes.

I think I might still have one stashed away somewhere.

[cherokeeprogressive]

51. I got one of these for a birthday during the 70's. Still have it somewhere.

[texanwitch]

53. I used one a month ago.

One of our neighbors still keeps a old one in case the power goes out.

It was strange to dial a phone again.

[janx]

54. Yorktown 5-6819

;-)

[denbot]

55. We still have use one.

Our main phone is a cordless but we keep an old bakealite dial phone in the hallway in case of a power failure (old dial up phones don't need power).

[madmom]

56. Funny story, when my daughter was in high school she did a visitation to a local

vocational school to see if she wanted to go. She had to call me to pick her up because her car died. They had a rotary phone in their office. She had to ask them how to use it. She has/will NEVER live that one down!

[madamesilverspurs]

57. Grew up with 'em.

A few years back the state began some service that you could do over the phone. I decided to give it a try, called the number and got the recorded message, "If you are using a touch-tone phone press 1. If you are using a dial phone press 2." I hung up, figuring that they weren't quite up to speed, yet.

---

[Iggo]

58. Richmond 9.

[hunter]

60. I've got one.

It used to freak out my kids' friends. They'd ask to use the phone and then they'd just stand there and stare at it. This was before every last kid had a cellphone or a friend nearby who did.

[applegrove]

61. I roomed with a lady during college in the 1980s. She had an old fashioned phone

with the separate earpiece on a line hooked up in her kitchen. I used it occasionally.