On Sat, 08 Apr 2006 12:01:01 GMT, (Beachcomber)
wrote:


Yes. I've heard it is different on (some?) later phones, but on real
phones, Western Electric phones**, and those that are good imitations,
if you don't have red and green right, you can talk and listen but on
touch-tone, you can't dial.

**Western Electric are the phones that God intended, and are the
actual phones used in Heaven.

All the others are Satanic.


Western Electric Telephones, such as the famous model 500 were built
to last 40 years (and indeed some have gone more than that).

The reason was that prior to the Bell breakup... Most homes and
businesses rented their phones and could not own them. To reduce
service calls, they were built like tanks, with heavy metal stampings,
true metal bells, a potted network, heavy-duty dialers, and no wimpy
modular connectors on the cables. The wires had solid crimp
connectors attached to screws and a solid metal strain-relief. To
move a phone to a different room was a major project.

That's another problem about these days: You have all these phones
wandering around like vagrants, tramps, and hussies.

Some don't even have an address. They'll go home with anyone.

You probably should call the phone man.

I'm not going to set up any illicit rendezvous.

I remember back in the early sixties, establishing new phone service
was a relatively pleasant, if time consuming experience.

One went to the local AT&T branch office (in my case, it was Illinois
Bell). Often these were office areas attached to the local town
telephone exchange. A nice lady (they were always women back then)

Women have an affinity for establishing phone service. The desk job
part, that is.

would invite you to her desk, serve you coffee, and then ask you
questions about establishing your service.

Then you got to pick your phone from the Western Electric models on
display. Most often this would be the model 500 available mostly in
black, but sometimes other colors were available. Later, you could
get a princess or a trimline wall phone if you wanted. If you wanted
a lighted dial, then the installer would use the yellow and black
wires for a lighting circuit and wire these to a plug in transformer

I knew they were there for sumpin'.

somewhere in your house (The birth of the very first wall warts!) I
heard that sometimes, these would catch on fire.

At some point touch-tone became available, but Illinois Bell stuck you
with an extra 70 cents per month to be this modern. My father always
argued that dial telephones were good enough for him.

Most numbers had alpha prefixes like PA9-2222 (Park 9) or AL1-1234
(Alpine 1). You might know your area code, but you never needed to
dial it.

When my mother first married my father and moved to western Pa. she
would pick up the phone and say, Oliver 4-2343, please; or Oliver
4-3873, please, and after a few days the operator said, "You don't
have to say Oliver 4, Ma'am. They're all Oliver 4."

In my first year of college, I had a BUtterfield-8 phone number.
Remember that one?

Directory Assistance was live and free, available 24 hours a day, and

No, no. It was Information, and people would call for all sorts of
information, although all I ever did was once call some city to find
out what time it was there.

you could use it as much as you wanted. (I think we should have a
law today that says that this is as it should be...)

Phone trouble? Dial #0 for operator or 611 for repairs and within
seconds you were speaking to a live person who could solve your
problem, again, 24 hours a day. No voice mail hell back then.

Beachcomber