Joe Bento wrote:
On 4/6/2014 8:48 PM, micky wrote:
On Sun, 06 Apr 2014 20:08:40 -0600, rbowman wrote:

micky wrote:

I first saw a touch-tone phone at a farm show in 1957. It was a long
time before Bell Telephone was offering them.

iirc, the Bell Pavillion at the 1964 New York World's Fair had a kiosk where
you could race each other to see which was faster, the rotary phone or the
new fangled touch-tone.

Sounds right. Maybe they spent the 7 years in between fixing up the
exchanges so they could process touch-tone dialing.


What I've found amazing is that the exchanges still maintain rotary / pulse compatibility.


Just for fun, we used to dial our touch tone phones in rotary mode by
tapping off hook switch rapidly.

353:

Wait for dial tone, then: tap tap tap pause tap tap tap tap tap pause tap
tap tap, etc.