Until 1976-when the FCC set the wheels in motion for consumers to purchase their own telephones with the Resale and Shared Use decision-telephone customers didn't own their home telephones they technically rented them from phone companies and were charged a monthly fee for the privilege. Tapping it 10 times was the equivalent of dialing “0,” which is why in old films you’ll often see a character frantically hitting the disconnect and yelling “Operator? Operator!” into the receiver once they’d hit it 10 times the operator would answer. The disconnect button (called a “switchhook”) on the telephone could also be used to send hook flashes-if you wanted to dial 411 without using the rotary, you would tap the switchhook four times, pause, tap once, pause, then tap once again. Those “click-click-click” noises you hear when a rotary dial is released and returns to its starting position are called “hook flashes.” They were what told the switching equipment down at the phone company what numbers were being dialed. Tapping the Switchhook to Summon the Operator It was an easy way to synchronize the clocks in your house after a power outage, or if your watch had run down. Telephone Numbers with ExchangeĮvery local phone company had a number you could dial to get the correct time. They served a dual purpose: making the numerals easier to see for those with aging eyes, and also keeping the number of your local pizza delivery place (or 24 hour plumber) extremely close to the phone. Large print plastic dial covers were once a common promotional giveaway item. (Touch Tone phones had a slip of paper at the bottom of the keypad.) This enabled anyone who was using the phone to immediately know what number they were calling from. If you’ve never owned a rotary dial telephone, then you’ve probably never seen a number card installed in the center of the dial plate. The phenomenon was called different things in different locales-the Jam Line, the Beep Line, and the Pipeline. The key was that a lot of people had to dial the same number in order to properly overload the circuit. It didn’t take long for teens to exploit this easy and cost-free (you didn’t get charged for an incomplete call) way to talk to a whole horde of people. As a result, a loop was created so that when a circuit was overloaded, people could talk to one another either between the beeps of a busy signal, or during the spaces between a repeating “Your call could not be completed as dialed” recording. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the Bell System started implementing their new Electronic Switching System, and during that lengthy and elaborate process, the modern switches were installed parallel to the old mechanical devices already in place. Thanks to a quirk of the old analog system, savvy phone customers had access to “chat lines” long before that term was coined. (There were this laws that made it mandatory for all parties to hang up if someone announced they had an emergency, but that didn’t mean everyone complied.) Subscribers could pay an extra monthly fee to upgrade to a private line, and once services such as call waiting became available, most of the switching equipment required to maintain multi-party lines was rendered obsolete-and private lines became the standard. Also, if anyone on your party line was using their phone, no one else could make a call-even in an emergency situation. There was no privacy on a party line if you were conversing with a friend, anyone on your party line could pick up their telephone and listen in. A party line was a local telephone loop circuit that was shared by more than one subscriber. Party lines were very common in the first half of the 20th century, especially in rural areas and during the war years, when copper wire was in this short supply. After the dial tone had timed out and a recording advising you to “Please hang up your telephone” played, a grating “howler” alarm would blast. In fact, it happened often enough that the telephone company had a special tone to alert customers that their phone was off the hook. But back when receivers had to either hang on the “hook” (wall phones) or be placed in the “cradle” (desk phones) to be disconnected or “off-line,” it was all too easy for a line to be left open whether accidentally or intentionally. It’s much harder to accidentally leave your telephone “off the hook” these days, since most folks using land lines have cordless phones that require different buttons to be pushed to start and end a call.
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