Pretend post offices and phone systems

[bandit957]

Did anyone ever make a pretend postal service or phone system in their day?

I did this when I was about 7 or 8. I pretended I was some brave buccaneer who had a phone system at sea to talk to other brave buccaneers.

Another thing I used to do was draw up dashboards for pretend airplanes, cars, and boats on paper grocery bags.

[kphoger]

Another thing I used to do was draw up dashboards for ... cars

I used to do that.

[Max Rockatansky]

I was more fascinated by the rotary phone at my grandparents house.

[JayhawkCO]

I was more fascinated by the rotary phone at my grandparents house.

We had a functional rotary phone at our house in my parents' room. Not our main phone obviously, but I definitely used it for the "novelty" of it.

[bandit957]

I was more fascinated by the rotary phone at my grandparents house.

When I was about 6, we still had a rotary phone. One day, we visited a family that were friends of my parents. I was fascinated by their touch-tone phone.

I was also fascinated by phones in offices that had the row of buttons at the bottom that included a red button among the white buttons.

In middle school, the office had a very fancy electric typewriter that had lots of symbols that typewriters usually don't have. I think it also had proportional width fonts. But by that time, personal computers were becoming popular.

[kphoger]

I don't think my grandfather ever got a touchtone phone.  He died in 2010, although the last year or two were in a nursing home.  After my grandmother died in the early 1990s, he rekindled an old romantic flame with a lady in northeastern France, whose house he had boarded at during WW2.  There must have been a LOT of rotary dialing, when every call to his honey was an international call that required dialing 011 33 before even getting to the actual area code and phone number.

[SEWIGuy]

I had a rotary phone throughout my childhood. It cost more for touch-tone, and my parents didn't want to pay for it. Later in my childhood, we had phones that you could dial with buttons, but it sent out the same "pulse" as a rotary and not an actual tone.

[Max Rockatansky]

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

[vdeane]

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

Why would an area code split require replacing the phone?

[Max Rockatansky]

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

Why would an area code split require replacing the phone?

Wasn't capable of dialing long distance.

[vdeane]

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

Why would an area code split require replacing the phone?

Wasn't capable of dialing long distance.

It seems strange to me that such a thing would be hardwired into the phone and not handled at the level of the phone network.

[kphoger]

I was more fascinated by the rotary phone at my grandparents house.

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

Why would an area code split require replacing the phone?

Wasn't capable of dialing long distance.

It seems strange to me that such a thing would be hardwired into the phone and not handled at the level of the phone network.

Yeah, Max, please explain.  It makes no sense to me either, and I work for the phone company.

[Max Rockatansky]

I was more fascinated by the rotary phone at my grandparents house.

The rotary I'm speaking of stuck around until around 1990.  The reason my dad and I replaced it was due to an area code split around Detroit. 

Why would an area code split require replacing the phone?

Wasn't capable of dialing long distance.

It seems strange to me that such a thing would be hardwired into the phone and not handled at the level of the phone network.

Yeah, Max, please explain.  It makes no sense to me either, and I work for the phone company.

That particular phone for whatever reason only would dial seven numbers and nothing greater.  Given this was 1990 I have no memory of what modem rotary it was.

[kphoger]

That particular phone for whatever reason only would dial seven numbers and nothing greater.  Given this was 1990 I have no memory of what modem rotary it was.

It still sounds like something that would have been limited at the exchange, not the telephone itself.  I suppose it's possible that your grandparents' exchange only had switch banks in rows of seven, but then nobody else would have been able to make long-distance calls with a rotary phone either.

[Max Rockatansky]

That particular phone for whatever reason only would dial seven numbers and nothing greater.  Given this was 1990 I have no memory of what modem rotary it was.

It still sounds like something that would have been limited at the exchange, not the telephone itself.  I suppose it's possible that your grandparents' exchange only had switch banks in rows of seven, but then nobody else would have been able to make long-distance calls with a rotary phone either.

There is a strong possibility that is actually what issue was.  My Grandparents were famously cheap and wouldn't pay for anything unless it was absolutely necessary.  I recall being scolded by them over suggesting that $20 for seventy channels was a worthwhile investment. 

[kphoger]

Are you sure that other models of rotary phones could dial long-distance from the same neighborhood?

[Max Rockatansky]

I'm fairly certain by that point that my grandparents rotary was the last in the neighborhood.

[elsmere241]

I had a rotary phone throughout my childhood. It cost more for touch-tone, and my parents didn't want to pay for it. Later in my childhood, we had phones that you could dial with buttons, but it sent out the same "pulse" as a rotary and not an actual tone.

My parents had that for a long time - they were too cheap to pay for Touch-Tone.

[kphoger]

I'm fairly certain by that point that my grandparents rotary was the last in the neighborhood.

Then I bet it had nothing to do with their particular model of phone.  The phone company was probably just making the switch to touchtone dialing.

[Road Hog]

Not me, we were touchtone in the states at least 1980 as far as I can remember. But when I lived in Germany in the early 1990s Deutsche Telekom were still on pulse dialing and cellular service was in its extreme infancy to be kind.

[elsmere241]

Not me, we were touchtone in the states at least 1980 as far as I can remember. But when I lived in Germany in the early 1990s Deutsche Telekom were still on pulse dialing and cellular service was in its extreme infancy to be kind.

It wasn't until 1994 or 1995 that they even talked about cell phones that could be used in all of Europe.

[1995hoo]

I had a rotary phone throughout my childhood. It cost more for touch-tone, and my parents didn't want to pay for it. Later in my childhood, we had phones that you could dial with buttons, but it sent out the same "pulse" as a rotary and not an actual tone.

I recall for a time there were what I guess you could call "switchable" phones. I had one when I was in college and everyone else in my dorm thought it was very cool because it had a digital display showing the number called and the duration of the call (great for long-distance calls) along with 32 memory positions. (Nobody else had a phone that did any of that. Most of them had the slim type phones like the AT&T Trimline.) That phone had a feature for people who lived in pulse-dialing areas but who needed to access touch-tone menus (which were less common in 1991 than now). There was a switch on the side that you set to "Tone" or "Pulse," depending on what your phone system used to place calls, and then there was a button you'd press to get tones when you needed to beep through a menu. I never needed that function.

Regarding phones when we were growing up, something some of our younger members may not know is that once upon a time, you didn't own your own phones. You rented them from the phone company and the selection was exceptionally limited. I remember in 1983 when we moved my mother had to take the phones back to the phone company and then get new ones for the new house. They were all rotary phones in both instances. Within about a year after we moved you didn't have to rent them anymore and my father quickly replaced the rotary phones with touch-tone phones—with one exception: There was a phone in the unfinished basement that we only very rarely used, and when it did get used it was solely to answer a call (and, most likely, it would be a situation where someone answered upstairs and then yelled downstairs to say "it's for you!"), so because nobody ever dialed that phone he just left the rotary phone down there. I assume he bought it from the phone company for a lower price because I cannot imagine him paying unnecessarily (that wouldn't have been like him at all). I'm not sure what happened to that phone because it was still there when I went off to college in 1991 and it was gone four years later. I recall that phone was purely a wall phone design, so it wasn't any good without a wall-mounted phone jack and the appropriate mounting hardware (meaning, in that house, there were two places where that phone would have fit).

Speaking of wall phones, one thing about the rotary phones was that there was no way to store phone numbers in them. I remember my mom had a small decorative window shutter type thing that she hung on the wall above the kitchen phone and on the shutter slats she had labels with names and phone numbers.

[kphoger]

Regarding phones when we were growing up, something some of our younger members may not know is that once upon a time, you didn't own your own phones. You rented them from the phone company and the selection was exceptionally limited.

I'm amazed every so often, working in the industry, that we still run across new customers who expect to get a telephone from us during their install.

[1995hoo]

Regarding phones when we were growing up, something some of our younger members may not know is that once upon a time, you didn't own your own phones. You rented them from the phone company and the selection was exceptionally limited.

I'm amazed every so often, working in the industry, that we still run across new customers who expect to get a telephone from us during their install.

Those are probably the same sort of people who move into my neighborhood and then complain that they are not provided with a trash can upon arrival.

[SEWIGuy]

Regarding phones when we were growing up, something some of our younger members may not know is that once upon a time, you didn't own your own phones. You rented them from the phone company and the selection was exceptionally limited.

I'm amazed every so often, working in the industry, that we still run across new customers who expect to get a telephone from us during their install.

Those are probably the same sort of people who move into my neighborhood and then complain that they are not provided with a trash can upon arrival.

Every place I have lived has provided both trash and recycling bins.