Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
We had a phone without a dial, either rotary or touch; you would just jiggle the receiver hook and Sandra Brathol would come on line and say “Number Please?” Then you would ask her to connect you to Fred or Jim or Mary or whoever, or if you remembered the three digit number you could ask her to connect to that.
And she WOULD!
Ain’t technology grand?   |
Yeah, we had those. Except our Sandra Brathol was called Pixie Steptoe (I don't know if that first name was real but everyone called her that). There were others too. Sometimes there were rumours that they would listen in, but of course that would be against their hypocratic oath. They did know everyone in town though and they at least knew who they called and how often, so when I called my girlfriend (now my wife) and talked for hours they knew.
Incoming calls were done by a one letter morse code. A ring would sound on all phones on that line, but you only answer the ring if it was your letter. No, we didn't all know morse code, we only had to know our one letter. I guess they couldn't have more than 26 on a line. Actually they only chose letters that were easy to remember/distinguish I think.
This was rural. In town (a tiny place, actually) they all had their own lines, so no morse code needed. If the phone rang it was always for you. Us country folk thought that was pretty high tech. But the town folk still had to ask Pixie Steptoe to make an outgoing call.