Aye, when you ordered phone service, a technician would come over and install the line *and* the phone, which was hardwired into the wall (no modular jacks back then).
Of course, nobody ever complained about this, we were just too happy to get the miracle of a telephone in the house.
Jon
OK, yes I remember those days. As late as 1985 I remember hooking up another "real" phone and it rang but the other phone just barely had the power to "tick" the bells. Buying a cheap new phone took care of that since their REN was so low. I also remember that I was supposed to pay an extra $1/month for all additional phones. Screw that. I'm not sure, but I think around that time they may have stopped charging for extra phones because I vaugley remember asking the phone company to up the power for the ringers and it was done free.
I also had what I think was a "Princess" touch tone phone, not sure where I got it. For some reason I opened it up and saw a light bulb for the buttons. I called the phone company and asked why my bulb won't light and they told me they stopped supplying power for that. For free they did send me a little wall wort type thing to plug in and hook up to the phone so my light worked! I just saw it the other day, I think it is "Western Electric" brand, damn, now I can't find it!
As a kid we had an outdoor phone ringer mounted to the chimmney which was about the center of the house. I'm almost certain it was real Bell of PA equipment. Our lot was a little over an acre and it could be heard easily 1 or 2 houses away, and I don't think we paid monthly for it. Just once for the bell and the hookup. That would drive me nuts if my neighbor got one of them now, we had a large family so the phone rang a lot! Gawd knows how many times we ran inside only to just miss the phone, not to mention how many times the run included a trip and fall!
I know some business' still have some real phones for in case their system dies or the electric goes out. The bank of real phones still works with no electric.
Once (about 1985) I got a call from the phone company, saying they were no longer renting phones. They gave me the one I was renting from them.
Here, they added a second (overlay) area code. AFAIK no numbers have been assigned to that code, but we're still required to dial all 10 digits even to call someone next door.
BTW, I want to an appliance store recently (an old local store, not one something like Lowe's) and the (old) salesman was writing customers phone numbers down with 5 digits (5-digit dialing ended about 20 years ago, when we got ESS).
I wouldn't use that for more than 1 or 2 numbers, when there was no way to be sure what number you're dialing until it's too late.
On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:25:32 -0700, "Jon Danniken" wrote: [snip]
Now I usually "dial" from caller ID.
5 digits is a shorthand many people use, especially sales/marketing types. For example, 3 = 393, 4 = 344, 2 = 278, and so on. It works well until you get overlapping codes ending in the same digit. Also, many predictive dialers are programmed to work that way; they're usually called least cost routers. It's just software programmed for a specific area is all it is. Great for 10 & 11 & 14 digit daling, especially if auth codes go with it.
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