
Introduction to the Dial Telephone (1936) [video] - adamnemecek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaQm30DDHL8
======
bch
Some new, and some familiar DTMF[0] there. You can try it out directly with
xmms by playing this "location": tone://440;480

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-
frequency_sign...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-tone_multi-
frequency_signaling)

~~~
jd3
nice. didn't know xmms could play tones like that. I've moved on to using
mpd+theremin on this install, but I still have good 'ol xmms through pkgsrc ;)

really cool stuff.

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DyslexicAtheist
later versions contained an Easter egg: If you dialled a certain number you
could listen to a voice announcing the time.

This eventually became so popular that it was eventually implemented as an
official feature.

Also this eventually inspired David L. Mills to come up with the initial
design of the NTP protocol.

OK I'll see myself out ...

~~~
rootbear
In the US, the voice would say "At the tone, the time will be 12:23 and 40
seconds ... BEEP!"

But in the UK it was "At the third stroke, the time will be 12:23 and 40
seconds ... beep! beep! beeeep!"

I like the UK version because you can get into the rhythm, like when a music
conductor counts beats before an entrance. It would be interesting to know if
anyone had done a study to see if the UK version produced better results.

A local radio music show in the 70's edited the US version for their intro
into "At the _time_ the _tone_ will be 1 .. 2 .. 1 2 3 4" <music starts>.

~~~
joezydeco
OMD's "Time Zones" from _Dazzle Ships_ used a number of various telephone-time
recordings from different countries.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwx8A0XUpfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwx8A0XUpfM)

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assocguilt
What was the 'usual manner'?

~~~
tachyonbeam
You had to talk to a telephone switchboard operator, and they would manually
patch you in, I believe.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Photogra...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Photograph_of_Women_Working_at_a_Bell_System_Telephone_Switchboard_\(3660047829\).jpg)

[http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/1...](http://cdn2.business2community.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/vintage-switchboard-operator.jpg.jpg)

~~~
jcrawfordor
That's correct. There was a very lengthy intermediate period, ranging from the
introduction of dial telephones to as late as I believe the '70s in some areas
(Santa Catalina island off LA comes to mind as an area with manual operators
extremely late), where some areas had dial telephones and others had operators
- and for some time long distance trunks were split the same way!

This means that some people had dial service but, to make a long distance
call, had to speak with an operator. Other people had manual operator service,
but when they wanted to make a long-distance call the operator would connect
them to the trunk and then dial for them. For this reason many later-model
telephone switchboards had a rotary dial built into the desk.

Customers also weren't necessarily expected to have dialing down pat early on,
either. To this day, the error messages that you hear if you e.g. call a phone
number that does not exist are referred to as "intercepts." The reason for
this is that on early dial phone systems, when a customer encountered an error
the line would be flagged as needing attention and a human operator would
"intercept" the call to help the customer. These days this function is always
performed by a boring recording, which starts with the SIT tones - another
system of beep codes intended to tell automated dialers what went wrong.

~~~
Symbiote
In about 1999, on holiday with my parents in the USA, we had to make a long-
distance call from a payphone (somewhere in the Rocky Mountains to Michigan,
or something like that). I remember helping my dad to feed in the quarters as
fast as possible, as the huge cost of the call — $6 or something — plus the
low value of American coins meant the machine rejected the call before we
could pay for it.

On about the third or fourth try, an operator came on the line! I guess that's
a real "intercept". I don't remember what he did, he spoke to my dad, but the
call was made.

(We were on a very long road trip, and there was some problem with the car
we'd borrowed from American relatives.)

