On Monday, June 1, 2015 at 2:36:56 AM UTC-5, wrote:
On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 02:59:06 -0400, micky
wrote:


I have to tell you about when my mother moved to western Pa. in 1945,
from Indianapolis. While NYC and probably some other places had dial
phones already, we didn't. So my mother would tell the operator,
OLiver 4-1383 please, or Oliver 4-3343 please,and after a couple days or
weeks, the operator told her, You don't have to say Oliver 4, Ma'am.
They're all Oliver 4.

I remember when I came home and they had installed dials. They changed
the phone in my parents' bedroom entirely, but the wall phone in the
idtchen they took the top off, connected a couple wires, and attached a
top with a dial.

One time I called my best friend and I heard click click, click click
click. I hung up and our phone rang. He had been calling me. The
phone didn't ring at his end when I called.

When I was REAL young, my parents phone was on a "party line". Sometimes
I'd pick up the phone, and the other party would be talking. I still
dont understand how that worked. I assume the other party had a
different phone number. My guess is that they ran two phone numbers thru
the same wires to save on wires. My parents were glad when they got rid
of the party line, but I think they had to pay a little more.

The mechanical ringers on party line phones responded to a particular ringer frequency. The standard ringer signal is 90 volts AC at 20 cycles.
On a party line, each party's phone ringer responded to a specific ringer frequency. Because the filtering wasn't perfect, you would always hear a slight ding on your phone when another party was being called. My family's phone on our farm was a party line. A consistent problem the rural phone companies had was shotgun pellets from dove hunters guns puncturing the overhead phone cables which were lead sheathed and pressurized with nitrogen to exclude moisture. I loved living out in the country but rural living had problems quite different from city life. 8-)

Uncle Country Monster