History, learn it

[No one]

[Recusant]

   I've been reading up on the history of Ukraine.

[Biggus Dickus]

I was explaining to a younger co-worker today what a party-line was...for those unawares. A party-line was from long, long, long-ago times, way before the internet and cell phones when we still had old fashion rotary phones.

You actually shared you land-line with another house...so if they were on the phone and you picked up your phone to use it you could hear them speaking, or the other way around.

We had a party-line at my house growing up until I was senior in High School!

We were lucky as we shared ours with an old lady who lived on the block behind ours, and she didn't use it often enough were it was an issue, but I do remember as a young teenager, talking on the phone a with a girlfriend, and the old lady suddenly yelling at us into the phone for me to just say I loved her, and hang up so she could use the phone. Which made me wonder how long she was listening

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Some kids today have no idea how to operate a rotary phone. But those are why we call it "dialing" a number - the rotary portion of the phone was moved in a circle like a sun dial. Some today don't have any idea what the rotary part of the phone actually did.

[Dark Lightning]

Here's some esoteric information- rotary phones worked by making electrical pulses. If one toggled the lever of a wall phone skillfully enough, one could make a call without turning the rotary dial. Not really useful, a it takes a bit longer to get the number dialed that way.

[Old Seer]

When a kid we still had crank phones with dry cells on part lines in the outlying areas.

[Dark Lightning]

I was about 11 ('63) by the time enough money was available to afford a phone. It was a party line. No dry cells, though.

[billy rubin]

Here's some esoteric information- rotary phones worked by making electrical pulses. If one toggled the lever of a wall phone skillfully enough, one could make a call without turning the rotary dial. Not really useful, a it takes a bit longer to get the number dialed that way.

it was very useful.

i lived one summer where the rotary phone dials were locked to keep people from making long distance calls. i used the pushbuttons under the handset to click call whoever i wanted

[Biggus Dickus]

This is a cool conversation


My Grandparents still had the old wooden phone hanging on the wall next to their kitchen pantry, it wasn't hooked up any more, but my Grandpa like the way it looked so he left it...my sisters and I used to love to play with it while we were young. We would mimic TV shows like the Walton's, and pretend to make calls to Ike Godsey's Grocery Store.

It looked a lot this one, I especially remember the little shelf in the front.

[billy rubin]

i was in a bar once somewhere in guatamala and they had one of those still working on the wall. the bartender

who was chinese of all things

said that tbe whole village was on one party line and the wooden one would ring for every call in town

need a switchboard and a 24 7 operator to run those things. i remember the cordboards still bei g used up through the 70s for answering servoces

[Recusant]

Heh, quarter sawn oak for a telephone. Indeed and why not? 

[Dark Lightning]

Heh, quarter sawn oak for a telephone. Indeed and why not? 

IK,R? I was admiring that figure, too! I'm a member of a truck forum. One of the guys harvested some white oak and what he wasn't going to burn, he slabbed and stickered to dry for later use. Even with the wood being rough sawn, I could see the rays and flakes! Going to be eye candy once dried and milled to size! He's in upstate New York, and I'm in southern California, so I'm not going to ask him to ship me any. It would end up too expensive.