1954 How to dial your phone by Bell System

I don't get it. I'm sure I've seen pre-1950s phones with dials. What was so new about it?

I assume it was done exchange by exchange. A much earlier version.

How would one view these instructional films? There was no home video at the time.

Television, movie theater, or home projector at a school, club meeting, etc.

In England - the morons at the phone company stopped printing letter on the phone when all numbers came in. It was a major annoyance. The Americans did not.

and now look how important those letters turned out to be.

[quote]In England - the morons at the phone company stopped printing letter on the phone

sorry - LETTERS

They also looked better before.

It's so complicated....How can I expected to remember all this?

I love her Upper Crust New York accent

I know that my original phone number was AVON-XXXX, but I haven't been able to track down the full number. Maybe in my parents' papers.

Ours was DRake 6-xxxx

Ours was MIdway 8-xxxx

What's next? Billie Burke explains how to change a lightbulb?

It does seem odd that it took until 1954 for some people to get dials.

I do remember in England - we lived just 35 miles from London and had to call the operator to connect to London, until about 1974.

Also, it seems some young folk don't even know what an "operator" is. Recently when I was thinking of changing my landline supplier I asked about how I'd call the operator and the girl had to go ask someone what an operator was

The politics of the dial:

[quote]On rotary dial phones smaller numbers, such as 2, are dialed more rapidly than longer numbers, such as 9 (because the dial turns much further with a 9). In 1947, area codes were introduced in the United States, so as to facilitate direct distance dialing first by operators, then by subscribers. In the original system in use until 1995, the first digit of the area code could not be a one or a zero, but the second number had to be a one or zero. This allowed mechanical switching equipment in the central offices to distinguish local from "long distance" calls.

[quote]Therefore, the lowest and most quickly dialed code was 212; the highest and slowest 909. The Bell System, in developing the original area codes, assigned the lowest codes to the areas where they would be most used: the large cities. 212, the lowest number, was New York City. The next to lowest, 213 and 312, were Los Angeles and Chicago. 214 was Dallas and 412 was Pittsburgh. A high number like 919 was assigned to North Carolina. An even higher number, 907 (higher because the 0 counts as 10), was Alaska.

A dial tone! Ah, such beautiful memories.....Phones were so GLAMOROUS.

Now let's learn about typewriters!

Montrose 3-xxxx. I still remember those last four numbers.

[quote]Ours was DRake 6-xxxx

[quote]Ours was MIdway 8-xxxx

From Lily Tomlin's Ernestine album:

The pay phone that kept stealing people's dimes was BOswick ni-an -- ni-an six five oh.

Ernestine also offered to arrange for "how to dial your phone" lessons when she called a whorehouse after noticing that there had never been an outgoing call from that number. "In the case of the elderly, or the foreign, special instructions in dialing may be required. If it's a matter of unfamiliarity with your equipment, we could ... What's that? ... Oh, nobody's equipment is more familiar than yours. I see."

R18 "Oh you know Vito, our repairman? Yes he IS tireless..."

R13 That bit about the girl not knowing what an operator is made me faintly suicidal.

That silent version made dialing a phone look incredibly difficult. I would have panicked if I had seen that video.

I wish they would bring back party lines.

How are we supposed to remember all of this? And are they going to charge less for the calls now that we have to connect them ourselves? I doubt it.

Given that we have to dial our own phones, I predict that supermarkets will start asking us to ring up our purchases ourselves!

I, for one, will not stand for it.

[quote]And are they going to charge less for the calls now that we have to connect them ourselves? I doubt it.

They did in England.

R8, that's not a dial tone, that's a buzzsaw!

Got to love those old phones.

[bold]WE[/bold]bster 5-1234. Because my dad's buddy at the telephone company got it for him as they were assigning numbers in the early 1950's. "Easy for people to remember," he said.

"Way too easy," he later said. He'd never give it up, though. I wonder who has it now.

When these came out 20 years later, I think he bought the first one. The Bell System resisted these for years out of fear people wouldn't make calls if they they thought they were being recorded.

I vividly recall the outrage when all-number phone numbers arrived....in fact, I'm still outraged.

[quote]I vividly recall the outrage when all-number phone numbers arrived....in fact, I'm still outraged.

Yes, it was ghastly.

Meet Ann (All Numbers Numbers) - get it?

[quote]I don't get it. I'm sure I've seen pre-1950s phones with dials

Really?

[quote]I vividly recall the outrage when all-number phone numbers arrived....in fact, I'm still outraged.

John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing

“One day I was at a cocktail party and I saw some people over in the corner,” Mr. Karlin recalled in a 2003 lecture. “They were obviously looking at me and talking about me. Finally a lady from this group came over and said, ‘Are you the John Karlin who is responsible for all-number dialing?’ ”

Mr. Karlin drew himself up with quiet pride.

“Yes, I am,” he replied.

“How does it feel,” his inquisitor asked, “to be the most hated man in America?”

Our number is YUkon 6 -####

I found a list of historic. Chicago exchanges - and was pleased to see ours

The lady in the first video shows how to dial the letters, dialing the "6" while saying the corresponding "O" ("oh") letter. Later, she says "O" again when she dials the number zero.

It's not confusing to us because we are familiar with it, but I can see that overlooked detail causing older people to say "which O do I dial?"

>And are they going to charge less for the calls now that we have to connect them ourselves?

No, they did it the all-American freedom-loving way... if you dialed yourself, it was the same price as before. If you used an Operator, it cost extra. A *lot* extra. Murrakah #1, fuck yeah!

In England (& France) we combined the letter O with the zero on our dials, so we never had the confusion the Americans had.

I’m the easiest one in town to find. Just call Butterfield 8.

^^ Weren't our Touch Tone Phones stylish! @ R37

and one choice of colour Two Tone Grey.

R18 "This is Ernestine, your nuisance operator, how may I help you? You say a man has been calling you with constant obscene phone calls?...What does he say? He wants to do WHAT to you? Is that F as in Frank?"

R1 The major conversion nationwide was In mid-50s and early 60s

I always remember a friend at high school telling me his mother was getting nuisance calls, the guy would say "Hang your panties on the line, I'm coming over!"

When we had exchange names you'd know neighborhood where someone lived .. MUrray Hill, GRamercy, Rittenhouse, CHelsea, COney Island, BEnsonhurst. In the suburbs exchanges were town names NEw Rochelle, WHite Plains, South Orange, Nanuet. Today no one knows where 779, 868, and 994 are.

randy ruffians

543 here. That was supposed to be NEw Rochelle.

R43 here again. My keyboard is playing games. I'll try again. It was supposed to be NEw Rochelle.

The great American pencil shortage of 1953 is no laughing matter!! It was equally as serious as the Norwegian butter crisis but received a fraction of the attention.

If this video were made today, 3/4 of people would scream TEE ELL DEE ARR!!!! and then never be able to dial their phones again because they didn’t have the abilities to watch a five-minute video tutorial.

I still have a landline. I don’t think I’ve made a call on it for 6 months at least but it’s still there.

In the States, the letters were used to dial numbers that had the name of the switching exchange-i.e., MO4-XXXX (664-XXXX) meant the number was from the Montrose exchange. I remember my older relatives always giving out numbers with the name of the exchange, if it had one, followed by the rest of the number. "Juniper" was another one. I don't know if those names were exclusive to San Francisco or not.

Hehe..great album, R18, R19 My favorite, Martha Mitchell. MM, was right, may she rest...

God, I had a friend whose number was NEw Rochelle - it became 914-636

MO in MYC was MOnument.

Enjoyed reading these posts. I sometimes forget all of the changes over the years to how we contact people. Almost all of my friends now text rather than talk on the phone. I remember when I was younger some of my calls lasted an hour or more. Now, when you actually call someone you get down to business, then hang up. Very few work phone calls since much of the communication is via email. I use my cell phone for conference calls so I at work so I can get up and go pee (on mute) if I have the urge.

[quote]When we had exchange names you'd know neighborhood where someone lived .. MUrray Hill, GRamercy, Rittenhouse, CHelsea, COney Island, BEnsonhurst. In the suburbs exchanges were town names NEw Rochelle, WHite Plains, South Orange, Nanuet. Today no one knows where 779, 868, and 994 are.

Of course that's all irrelevant now with cell phones. While my landline still has a geographically-accurate prefix, the cell phone prefix I have is assigned to a city about 20 miles away from mine (although within the same Area Code.)

I remember someone explaining that the reason for switching to ADD (all-digit dialing) was that they could create more prefixes, there are no two-digit combinations that can't also be expressed as the first two letters of a valid word.

[quote]Today no one knows where 779, 868, and 994 are.

Not to mention that people take their previously localized phone numbers with them when they move.

R55, that's also why nobody can remember phone numbers anymore... smart phones are a crutch, but one that we couldn't survive without due to number length today.

In the 1980s, most people remembered phone numbers with ~19-25 bits of Huffman-coded information:

* 2 bits: "my areacode", "the next one over", "the areacode where my parents/grandparents live", and "800"

* 5-8 bits for exchange (90-95% of memorized numbers fell into just a few, and most of the bits went to digit #3 of the exchange)

* 12-15 bits for the last 4 digits

Now, country code has become like areacode used to be (most Americans still think '1' is just what you dial to acknowledge that a call that might not be free, and have NO IDEA that it's the country code for the US & Canada), and a phone number has ~34 bits of real info that's less-amenable to mental Huffman-coding.

[quote]I remember someone explaining that the reason for switching to ADD (all-digit dialing) was that they could create more prefixes, there are no two-digit combinations that can't also be expressed as the first two letters of a valid word.

Also - international dialing was coming in and most countries didn't have letters round their dials.