How old are you?
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All of these users are middle-aged millennials, at least in my head, but the age doesn't matter.
I have used a touch tone payphone, but it was never a regular part of my life.
(I am a middle aged millennial, but I don't have any pay phones in my living room - I am fairly certain I have more than one mutual here who does.)
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Someone I know (wink wink) back in the 70s stole the touch tone keypad off a pay phone because at home they just had a rotary one.
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Twitter user still on X: "I wrote about why Obama let phone companies abandon their pay phones and what that means for the future of Democracy. Read it in the Atlantic!"
Bluesky: "read this interesting article I came across in the Atlantic about how payphones will help us in 2028!"
LinkedIn: "I'm proud to announce my new start up to help deliver telecommunications to the unphoned. We discovered an unmet market of people who can't afford the latest iPhone so we are going to install booths in third spaces that rent access by the minute."
HackerNews, same user: "check out this new startup revolutionizing communication using crypto and AI! I got it all going this weekend thanks to Claude"
X: "grok, when did payphones become woke?"
Mainstream press outlets: "Why is everyone talking about pay phones? This new start up, named after a minor LoTR character, thinks they will change the world."
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@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Someone I know (wink wink) back in the 70s stole the touch tone keypad off a pay phone because at home they just had a rotary one.
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Worked great until they almost got arrested...
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@Wyatt_H_Knott @galacticstone And the Witchita Linesman, is still on the line...."
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I have made a call on a rotary payphone without paying.
The coin mechanism in that payphone depended on the dial. If you held a dtmf dialer up to the horn and dialed the payphone never started charging money.
(Last century)
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How old are you?
@galacticstone Listening to coin dropping down the depth of steel payphone and then spinning rotor - that was fun
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I was Alexander Graham Bells second call.
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Tiktok: "look at this cool thing I found in the back of this restaurant, it's like an old cell phone, but it's mounted to the wall, it only makes calls
and you share it with other people!"Reddit: "help, wtf is this thing?"
Mastodon: "oh cool. That's the unique one that was made by Western Electric to supports both pulse dialing and tone dialing depending on the jumper behind the keypad. The logo is for a phone company that went bankrupt after 3 months and is now part of Verizon. I have three of them in my living room."
Facebook: "oh the good old days! I still can't believe Obama banned payphones!"
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I own a rotary phone from the 1940s that has a ringer I assume was designed for the civil defense. That is, you can hear it ringing down the block. The phone appears to be made of Bakelite. I'm not at home or I'd post pictures.
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Would you like to purchase a pay phone? I have one.
@HopelessDemigod @IrrationalMethod I don't think that's what was meant by "payphone"...
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Tiktok: "look at this cool thing I found in the back of this restaurant, it's like an old cell phone, but it's mounted to the wall, it only makes calls
and you share it with other people!"Reddit: "help, wtf is this thing?"
Mastodon: "oh cool. That's the unique one that was made by Western Electric to supports both pulse dialing and tone dialing depending on the jumper behind the keypad. The logo is for a phone company that went bankrupt after 3 months and is now part of Verizon. I have three of them in my living room."
Facebook: "oh the good old days! I still can't believe Obama banned payphones!"
And on YouTube there's a whole channel devoted to ancient telecom works, but it's run by somebody at least one if not two generations younger than me.
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@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I own a rotary phone from the 1940s that has a ringer I assume was designed for the civil defense. That is, you can hear it ringing down the block. The phone appears to be made of Bakelite. I'm not at home or I'd post pictures.
@shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I have one from the early 50s that has a party line ringer. I assume the ringer still works, but nothing sends party line ring signals anymore. Everything else works fine; it can call numbers through my FTTH box.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I've used a rotary payphone many times as a child/teen. It was called "orelhão" ("big ear") in Brazil. It was modernized with touch tone, card swiper, until cell phones took over the market by the 2010s. They're sadly being phased out, because almost no one uses them anymore.
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orelh%C3%A3o
https://www.orelhao.arq.br/ -
The problem with me buying a pay phone is I either need to get a VoIP line and set up a PBX, or I need to start buying old telephone exchange rack mount equipment.
The first sounds like a nightmare, and the second will end up in my basement with my kid cursing me to eternal damnation after I pass away.
I completely understand.
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Ham radio social net:
"Yeah. That was a great time meeting for coffee at the diner this morning. Did you see that everyone's talking about payphones? I used to work for Western Electric in the adjacent department. You remember Roy, the old club president? Yeah. He designed the dial mechanism. What a hoot that guy was."meshtasticore-verse: "dyk my uncle, the HAM, used to work on pay phones? i wrote a python script to let me use one as a T9 keyboard to send this msg."
@IrrationalMethod I recently bought meshtastic hardware and started calling it ham radio for the younger generation. I got 325 km in six hops!
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@shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I have one from the early 50s that has a party line ringer. I assume the ringer still works, but nothing sends party line ring signals anymore. Everything else works fine; it can call numbers through my FTTH box.
@mweiss @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone wow, even though I've had two VoIP jobs I didn't know a party line ringer was even a thing!
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While I understand what you're going for here, I suspect asking this question on the fediverse is going to skew the results somewhat.
Like, I am sure there are folks here who would drive two hours out of their way to use a rotary pay phone.
@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I did use the one remaining rotary pay phone in the county, can definitely confirm that is a thing people did.
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@HopelessDemigod @silentLurker
Oh that's a nice looking one.
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@IrrationalMethod I recently bought meshtastic hardware and started calling it ham radio for the younger generation. I got 325 km in six hops!
I have looked at some meshtastic hardware from time to time and know a lot of (younger) hams who are also doing meshtastic/meshcore/etc.
I've never managed to line up the timing of my interest, hobby budget, and understanding of what I need to get started.
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@HopelessDemigod @silentLurker
Oh that's a nice looking one.
@HopelessDemigod @silentLurker
I wanted to further expand on my joke about fediverse pay phone collectors, but I was afraid if I tried to work the breakup of Ma Bell into it based on a timeline I read on Wikipedia someone might correct me.
