How old are you?
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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.
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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.
I had a rotary phone of the classic desktop design for a while, but I never hooked it up.
My mom got it as a house warming gift, as my house is of the vintage to have a phone nook near the front entrance. Right now we just have a mail sorter there.
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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.
@stonebear2 I've not dived into that world yet, but I get recommendations for those videos.
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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!"
Okay, since this went viral and I don't have a soundcloud, I'll just drop a link to the @connections Museum (telecom history) in Seattle/Denver that I have yet to successfully make it to!
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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 have a 5lb rotary phone and a 1980's faux ship phone
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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 Children: Why did you use to glue your phones to the wall when you were small?
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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 *cycle
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you're right, I can't believe I wrote "drive"
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I grew up in a city and had both dial home phones and dial pay phones. At the same time, when visiting my grandparents, we used crank handled phones and calling long distance entailed calling the operator and waiting for them to forward the call through many hops to the person you wished to speak with. In many ways a simpler and less "noisy" existence.
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How old are you?
@galacticstone I've used a rotary phone (grandma's house) but never a rotary payphone; all those I've used have been touch-tone. :^)
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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 me: oh cool, a payphone that's not derelict or a defibrillator or a library!
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@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)
@PE4KH @galacticstone Phreaking?
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@IrrationalMethod @galacticstone Worked great until they almost got arrested...
@fullyabstract @IrrationalMethod @galacticstone
For some reason this reminded me of our family sitting down to dinner and letting the phone ring as we scowled, "the nerve of people calling during dinner time!"
Needless to say my phone is on DND 24/7 except for my parents, my wife, and my sister. -
How old are you?
@galacticstone
Payphone? We have phone at home, just wait and use that, saves a dime.
