I remember party lines, and five rings signaling our phone.
Don Chichester
In a message dated 12/6/2010 2:31:11 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
hate to admit it, but I remember it all!
Jay Sonin
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Biel" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:54 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] Touch-Tone (was: Tone-Arts Records)
From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
> That's the old style of expressing 10-digit phone numbers, I'd put the
> discs
> circa 1940's. That style was used up into the 1960's. Our resident phone
> historian Dave Dintenfass will hopefully chime in here, but I think they
> went to 10 numbers when touch-tone became widely available.
> JU6-2346 is 586-2346. The area code would be 212, but I don't think there
> were 3-digit area codes in the 78-RPM days.
Doesn't ANYBODY remember "BUtterfield 8"???? Every year someone comes
out with a list of things that the average college freshman would no
long know from personal experience, and I guess that telephone exchanges
went on that list a long time ago.
These colorful, historical, and descriptive word exchanges did not go
down without a fight. There were many petitions passed around to keep
them, and you can best relive that era with the great Alan Sherman song
"The Let's All Call Up AT&T And Protest To The President March"! This
has the lyrics and a short sample:
http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/song_details.aspx?SongID=67
Oh my goodness -- another site offers a Ring Tone of this!!! How
ironic.
But then the phone company started to produce phones WITHOUT LETTERS!
That didn't last long because companies had built their numbers around
words, but I remember George Brock-Nannestad's annoyance as he tried to
figure out a phone number on his Danish cell phone when all he had was
the word and a phone with no letters on the keys. (But where would our
kids be without letters on the keys so they can text!!)
6453 2435 [log in to unmask]
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