How old are you?
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@mweiss @shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone
I thought party line ringing was generated at the Central office.
@w_b @shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone it is. The ringer was designed to respond only to a particular pattern so it wouldn't ring at all if the call was intended for someone else on the line.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I've used a phone-company-issued calling card from a Touch-Tone
payphone, but I think the rotary ones were all phased out by the time I ever made a sent-paid coin call that didn't involve the operator.I'm old enough that I was taught how to use a phone in school, including operator-assisted calls. We still had five-digit local dialing when I was in second grade. (Then we moved to a rural area remoted on a digital exchange so seven-digit dialing was mandatory.)
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@mweiss @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone wow, even though I've had two VoIP jobs I didn't know a party line ringer was even a thing!
@shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone I discovered it when I brought the phone home and it didn't ring. I had to do some research online to learn about this one.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone
One of my first tasks as a technical editor was to assist the senior editor in taking apart and putting together the pay part of a payphone, to test the documentation.
It didn't go according to the instructions but we fixed them.I remember button A and button B!
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How old are you?
@galacticstone Can't call yourself old school unless you've tipped a street urchin a farthing to run a message from Kensington to Whitechapel, preferably in mid-winter.
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@w_b @shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone it is. The ringer was designed to respond only to a particular pattern so it wouldn't ring at all if the call was intended for someone else on the line.
@mweiss @shapr @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone
Thank you for clarifying that. I should see a phone geek friend tomorrow. I'll have to ask about it.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone rotary, 28yo
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@galacticstone @Wyatt_H_Knott Ah yes, the infamous butt set! I have one of those in my toolkit from way back in my early networking days. Telco services were a thing and confirming dial tone was important.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone ope! I didn't read carefully. I've used a rotary phone but not a rotary payphone. I have used a touch tone payphone. 1-800-COLLECT.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I've used coin-operated, button-keypad payphones a single digit number of times, I don't know what a touch-tone is
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I once found a gram of weed in the change slot of a payphone, and a group of young boys down the sidewalk a little, nervously watching me (ie: old enough that payphones were used to score weed)
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I've used a touch tone payphone to dictate a shopping list for dad's pager, is that anything.
And many years later to make a recipient-paid call when my prepaid sim ran out.
Other than those few occurrences, I'm really close to never having used any kind of payphone.
I might have been the last generation where it was normal and expected to not have a comms device on you at all times for most of my childhood. Good times.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I don't know what a payphone is, and I don't know if it's because I'm a young chachŏr or a non-native English speaker, or both. :3
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I have used rotary phones, but I can't remember a rotary payphone. But I didn't much use payphones until college.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I *think* the first time I used a rotary payphone was when I came to Japan, in 1981. It's rare to find them in service today but they still exist here.
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/C5122AQFIt_iizcLnMA/feedshare-shrink_800/feedshare-shrink_800/0/1581402043648?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=rRySyEDuW6IeaJDBBzVZSSnVLURYZW6EvzRrrKWeUFA -
How old are you?
@galacticstone I built a red box on my Newton to make free calls on touch tone pay phones.
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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 feel seen. I once spent several days trying to find a purchasable specimen of a rare Japanese pay phone that appeared in That One Video Game for like 15 seconds.
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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 I’m pretty sure there are people that follow me that OWN a rotary payphone lol.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone Old enough ( but NOT THAT old yet, still old enough ) to remember when "colour TV was quite a novelty thing" and to had for quite a number of years watched BW TV on a TV that still had some vacuum tubes.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone When I was a student, here is how I would call my mom:
1. Go to a special building
2. Talk to a human being behind a window
3. Pay them for a certain number of minutes.
4. Wait to be called.
5. Enter one of the 6 phone booths in the room (the number of the booth is given to me when I'm being called)
6. Talk to my mom.I'm actually not that old (about a decade younger than you), just not from the US (and the calls were international)
