converting an old rotary phone to work now

[pheeh.zero]

so

That is indeed a volume control, but it is for the bell. The only thing that might help is a new earpiece speaker.

[Stormin Mormon]

Go to radio shack. They used to have adaptors from four pin to modular.

[Stormin Mormon]

I havn't used a rotary phone on a line, in ages. But very likely both. No child under 30 will know how to dial it.

[gfretwell]

Has anyone been in there screwing with the wiring inside the phone? The "network" could be miswired. The other thing is the dial itself has a contact to make it quieter when dialing. That may be dirty.

[Mark Lloyd]

However, those old phones required considerably more current to ring than most new electronic phones. That may not be available.

[Mark Lloyd]

One of those big 4-prong plugs? Those with a square arrangement with about an inch between prongs. It's the first phone plug I remember seeing.

[Gary H]

I wonder it it'd work with MagicJack.

[terry]

Yes and no:

In most cases and on a single party line the 'third wire' allowed the 'ringer (electromechanical bell inside phone or sometimes even separate) to be connected, or not connected as required.

The above posting is correct that on 'some' party lines the ringing was sent on one side of the line (with respect to ground) for, say, one party on a two party line and other side of the line for the other party!

There were also other other systems of ringing; including multiparty coded ringing (two longs and short etc.) which also sometimes used one side of the line or the other.

And ringing systems that used different frequencies of ringing; there was on for example (Sold by AECo. Chicago), that allowed for five different ringing frequencies, 16, 25, 33, 50 , 66 cycle/hertz etc. and with those five frequencies on each side of the telephone line it was possible to have up to ten parties on one line. This was usually on long rural lines; but am familiar with one city that used to have four parties on a line, using the different frequency ringing. That city did not use ringing to ground (i.e. one side of the line because of the difficulty, in that rocky and high resistivity of the soil location, of obtaining and maintaining good ground connections! So in that instance the four (not five) frequencies were sent on the pair of wires, not in respect to ground.

The advantage being that only one party's phone would ring on an incoming call; thus allowing a 'little more' privacy!

ALL OF WHICH: Leads to another comment/suggestion to the original poster: If you wish or have trouble getting your 'vintage' phone to ring on incoming calls (and you wish to have it so) check that the ringer/bell is connected either by that third lead or internally inside the phone. Also if it is of some non North American manufacture it 'may' have been designed to work best on some ringing frequency other than the 20 hertz most commonly used in North America; however recollection is that the non frequency selective ringing phones are usually not that sensitive to ringing frequency and would sometimes ring (continuously or intermittently) when power faults came in contact with telephone lines.

Strikes one that there must have been as many varieties of phones around the world since Alexander Graham, a Scottish immigrant to Canada discovered the principle of turning speech into variations of electric current, as the many versions of radios/wireless sets in use since the advent of radio transmission.

[Ian]

Simply untrue. I'm 22 and know about rotary phones. Hell, my cottage

*still* doesn't have touchtone dialing.

Ian

[n4buq]

I still have one of those RS touch-tone generators. Used to use it for phone patch operations when my 2-meter radio didn't have touch- tone capability.

Barry - N4BUQ

[David Nebenzahl]

On 8/10/2008 9:32 AM terry spake thus:

I don't know for sure, but suspect that dialing "O" would get you through to the "operator" the way it does by pressing "O" with such systems (most are set up to reach some default number on that keypress).

[mm]

Yes.

Also I think with enough practice, one can learn to make touch-tone sounds with one's mouth. I think there was a guy on tv who could do that.

OT I get few junk phone calls now, but with one, I pressed 9, and a recording said something like, "You have been placed on our do-not-call list".

[philsvintageradios]

I have one of these old dial phones. I can answer it , and call out but the bell won't ring. I was told it was a "party line phone" and therefore it requires a different frequency to ring. If this is true, is there a way to modify it so it can ring?

I am in canada and it is a very common design , your standard black desk phone, these were the ones they phone company (bc tel) provided, unless you paid extra to get some other fancy color or design

Phil

[AZ Nomad]

Doubtful. You'd need to sets of vocal cords in order to generate the two simultaneous frequencies used to DTFM (tone-tone) dialing.

[AZ Nomad]

Which is their list of confirmed phone numbers to harass next.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 8/11/2008 12:56 PM AZ Nomad spake thus:

But that's just what the Tuvan throat singers do: sing two tones simultaneously. Amazing stuff. Could probably be trained to do DTMF.

[Stormin Mormon]

And they actually show up Friday at 7:12 AM? I think I met that guy.

[mm]

You have a point but my phone had already rung and been answered by my machine or me. Wasn't I already on the do-harass list?

[bud--]

Make sure the bell is connected across the telephone line. As discussed elsewhere, sometimes (US) on party lines the bell was connected from one telephone line to 'ground'. It may also have been disconnected.

Or it may require a different ring frequency.

[salty]

It's been done by whistling.

I can whistle dual tones myself, although I've never tried using that talent for phone phreaking.

BTW, it's DTMF, not DTFM