Confusion in the last line!!!

On Sat, 08 Apr 2006 22:19:46 -0500, Jim Redelfs
wrote:

In article ,
mm wrote:

So even a real Touchtone phone doesn't have to be connected right
anymore?

That depends on what constitutes a "real" Touchtone phone. The oldest ones
have to be wired right.

That's what I thought, but something in the previous post made me
think there had been an improvement at the Central Station.

The newer (all now at least 10-15-years old)
Touchtone phones didn't care.

I have a touch tone phone going back to 1962 or earlier. I think that
was the one that was originally 10-button.

I was also at a farm show in 1957 where the phone company, I guess it
was, had a booth, and they demonstrated a touch tone phone. This one
also had plastic cards, maybe 2x4 inch, that were pre-semi-perforated.
You wrote the name of the person at the top of the card, and then
completed punching out 3mm holes to make his phone number. Each line
was one number, but there weren't ten holes per line, only about 5 so
maybe it was binary or something.

Then one held the card vertically and pushed the card, twice as thick
as a credit card, into the slot in the top of the phone where it
stayed. Then one pushed a button and the card came out, touch-toning
the number as it came. It was cool.


To me, a "real" Touchtone phone is at least 15-years old, was made by Western
Electric, and was of the old Desk or Wall or Princess configuration. Those
phones are "polarity" sensitive as are the first generation, round-button
Trimline phones that use a dial light transformer to illuminate the buttons.

OK. I agree with your definitions.

With the pair connected one way, the Touchtonetm keypad will work -
depressing a button/key will "break the dialtone".

With the pair reversed, the phone will ring, you can talk on it, but you can
NOT dial a call. The keypad doesn't work. It stays SILENT when any key is
pressed. It doesn't "break the dialtone".

Even the later model Trimlinetm phones had a "polarity guard" making
red/green orientation unimportant.

Said another way: If you have a Touchtonetm phone that has a non-working
keypad (NONE of the keys make a noise at all), check and note the keypad
function when the offending phone is plugged-into other jacks.

The central offices have a way to make it right even if it
is wrong?

Yes, as long as it is an ANCIENT, Western Electric phone.

Wait a second. Those are what you said above wouldn't work.

Is that true everywhere? or at least in Baltimore?

Probably.