You Know You're Getting Old When ...

[skywatch]

Attachment 128023


Not rotary, but my first non-rotary. Yugoslavian, award-winning. 1980s I guess.

It had buttons but you couldn’t use them to select menu items when that came along. I think there were people who could convert them, but one day, with a slightly heavy heart, I put it in the bin.

Lovely thing, beautifully made.

I suspect this was the sort of pushbutton phone that caused a rotary-imitating click noise to go down the line with button presses. I bought a $15 rotary-tone pushbutton phone for my freshman university dorm room around the same year as yours. Does anyone remember when (in the US at least) the Bell corporation actually owned all the phones, and leased them to us? They could tell how many phones you had in your house by the electrical resistance when the phone rang, so they could tell if you were cheating with extra telephones. One of my first successful electronic hacks as a teenager in the mid-70s involved opening up a spare phone I had found, disconnecting the ringer, and using it for free in our house, as Ma-Bell couldn't see the extra resistive load without the ringer.

Does that count as an old-person's story?

[tribe125]

^^^

Something similar in the UK. Phones came with the rented phone line, from the GPO/British Telecom. I think it was actually theft if you moved house and took your phone with you.

[tribe125]

Initially, TVs were rented too. You went to the TV shop to pay your rent, and if you got behind they came and took it away. There might have been people who bought them outright but I didn’t know any. The system had some advantages - if the TV broke, or was unreliable, they swapped it for another.

[Fantasio]

When I was a child our home had one of these.



When I moved out on my own I bought one of these (without the Swedish telecom logo on left bottom), but the line and number I rented.



When we moved together with my wife we bought a share in the phone company, which gave you also the connection. In the long run it was cheaper than rented one. It's in our attic just in case...
We still have the company share too, although we haven't lived in that company's area for years. Still get dividends about 50€ a year.

[crownpuller]

Initially, TVs were rented too. You went to the TV shop to pay your rent, and if you got behind they came and took it away. There might have been people who bought them outright but I didn’t know any. The system had some advantages - if the TV broke, or was unreliable, they swapped it for another.

Ah yes, the days when Rediffusion and Granada were on the high street. I even remember the Granada advert on the TV: To the tune of 'That's Amore'...
"The pleasure you get renting your colour set, from Granada;
Great service, great sets, that's what you get, from Granada"

I also remember my Dad on the roof 'tweaking' the aerial and my Mum shouting up the chimney when the picture got better or worse.

[Samanator]

If I’ve done my math right, I’m the youngest one here on the forum. Not by a large margin, maybe 1-3 years. I am beginning to think that I am the youngest person in the world who has ever used a rotary phone. I’ve worked with kids who “have heard of them”, but never seen one.

It's all relative. In our group of friends where we live my wife and I are the babies of the group.

[Samanator]

Wait, you're telling me the person who filmed a rotary phone video got YouTube to show up? That's a pretty big deal.

I meant video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHNEzndgiFI

[Samanator]

when you know what VHS is ..

Probably even less know what a Betamax is.

[Samanator]

hmmm is it worse I still have got a rotary phone

And it still works? I did not think the phone lines supported rotary dial or touch tone any longer. I beleive current phones use a different tone standard.

[Sedi]

And it still works? I did not think the phone lines supported rotary dial or touch tone any longer. I beleive current phones use a different tone standard.

AFAIK you need an A/D-converter to translate the analog signal into digital. We also have one of those old rotary dial phones, I tried to connect it once, it did ring indeed but you couldn't hear anything when picking up.
Edit: I looked it up -- there are even certain types of routers that still have an analog port to connect a rotary dial phone but they are expensive. Or you need a converter just for the dialing to convert the signal from what I read.
BTW -- I thought "Video 2000" was the best system. Twice the runtime of a normal VHS cassette since you could record on both sides like on a normal audio cassette. But VHS won, not because it was better though. There was another reason for it but I can't remember.