My mother insisted on an extra bell. It was probably audible whichever house you were in - let alone within a single house. She did this despite her tending to leap in the air the moment it started to ring and then getting all a tither.
636-1636 Call me:-)
Totally dial.
And I learnt to "hook dial".
And we still kept the repeater bell box on the wall :)
And dialling auntie in Canada at Xmas would often entail retrying due to all the trunk lines to the americas being busy. Seem to recall there was a special engaged tone for that, but I'm not totally sure...
And there was a TV programme our way called "01 for London"
I was working for BT when the 706 / 746 were still in service and although I didn't work for the 'phone' side of it.
Who ever had to have their BT phone replaced because it went wrong?
I wonder how many of us used any of these:
Cheers, T i m
They are a bit modern! Go to the vintage phones on that site and the GPO300 looks like what I remember my grandparents having (though it might have been a more recent version). I was fascinated by the little drawer.
We're still standing up here at Sewage Farm View Apartments:
Owain
Yep - that's the one we had :)
Oh yeah - and 40-50 years old and still working?
Says a lot for modern crap...
We had a Trimphone (posh).
However the bedroom extension was taken out to save on the rental (impoverished posh).
Owain
;-)
The only time I remember seeing (and playing) with anything like that was at my Dads office in Leadnenhall Street. Lifts with the open metal concertina shutters, half glazed wooden doors with the company name hand painted on the glass, gas ring in the fireplace to make the tea on. ;-)
A real treat was us buying a box of ring doughnuts at a bakers on the way in. ;-)
It's amazing what entertainment a well equipped stationary cupboard offered a 10 year old in those days. ;-)
Cheers, T i m
With the tritium glow ring ?
There still is. Equipment engaged is different to subscriber engaged. Not that I've heard equipment engaged for a *long* time.
We had one of those at home!
Not specifically for trunk lines but Equipment Engaged Tone (EET) still in use although rarely encountered these days - 400Hz 0.4s on (first tone) 0.35s off, 0.225s on (second tone) 0.525s off (second tone at a different level to the first i.e. -16 to -19dBm (first tone) -10 to
-13dBm (second tone).
EET is easily confused with Busy Tone (returned when the called number is engaged) - 400Hz -10dBm 0.375s on, 0.375s off.
Peter
I don't remember - I don't think we knew that it was supposed to glow, so didn't look to see if it did.
It was a party line though so had the switch to press before dialling.
Kindergarten had a 300 on a shelf above the handwash sinks in the downstairs classroom.
Owain
I think I've got a couple somewhere. Certainly have a 741 wall mounted phone with real bells and proper dial. I don't think it's a
711.
Interesting trip back in time. When I moved into my first home in 1981 I had a compact phone poss
By a strange coincidence my flat had 3 rooms in light grey, brown, and blue colour schemes when I moved in, and I did think of putting the appropriate Compact in each room.
Owain
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