Telephones... then and now

ultrarunner · Jan 5, 2017

I visit to Grandma's house is a trip back in time for the Grand kids...

Rotary Dial phones, Zenith Color Console TV, Blaupunkt Stereo System, 1950 Nutone house intercom, mercury thermostat, 4 handle tub/shower plumbing, American Standard Faucets, etc...

k0ua · Jan 5, 2017

ultrarunner said:
I visit to Grandma's house is a trip back in time for the Grand kids...

Rotary Dial phones, Zenith Color Console TV, Blaupunkt Stereo System, 1950 Nutone house intercom, mercury thermostat, 4 handle tub/shower plumbing, American Standard Faucets, etc...

It is a time machine, man!

ultrarunner · Jan 5, 2017

k0ua said:
It is a time machine, man!

Add that to two of my cars in the garage... 1911 Model T Speedster and 1931 Dlx Roadster and the poor kids don't know what to think but they sure do remember.

ultrarunner · Jan 5, 2017

I'm hesitant to bring this up since I may jinx myself...

First... we had 20 good and uneventful years with ATT at the "New" hospital.

Mid 2015 came to work and we have no phone service... a new sublet had ordered fiber and ATT took this as a signal to close out the hospital's existing service... took just about moving a mountain to have it restored in 2 hours... the reason given is POTS service is always terminated when Fiber order is complete... even though the Fiber is for a Hospital tenant.

60 days ago our preferred plan that we have had for 19 years went away... I was able to have it reinstated with a one year contract and have e-mail paper trail all the overages would be credited and my account rep gave us the proper amount to pay which we did calculated under the plan.

Two billing cycles have elapsed and we are still billed without the plan rate and now have late fees etc... account rep said it can take 90 days to resolve... meanwhile I'm looking at 19k in charges made in error...

The only thing I know is that I'm spending way too much time hung up on this...

I've contacted all the folks by phone and e-mail... thank goodness for e-mail!

flyerdan · Jan 5, 2017

James May (of Top Gear and currently The Grand Tour) has a series on BBC called The Reassembler, where he puts together some vintage item. One show was about a rotary dial desk phone from the late 50's or early 60's. Rather interesting show for the relatively small audience of us who enjoy learning how things work.

Industrial Toys · Jan 5, 2017

I watched Citizen4 on Netflicks last night. A story about how Snowdon handed over material to journalists. Very interesting.

There was a time when wire taps were just that. After getting a court order of course!

The Data acquisition rates of these government programs are just beyond comprehension.

Looking4new · Jan 5, 2017

When I was a young gaffer our phone number was 269R4 and all the calls were placed through an operator. There were 4 others on our line. After the area went to dial phones the number changed to TEmple 9-2694 I think that was in the '60s and now I have no idea if the number is still valid as I don't live anywhere near there. (3.5 hours north of there)

3930dave · Jan 5, 2017

ultrarunner said:
I visit to Grandma's house is a trip back in time for the Grand kids...

Rotary Dial phones, Zenith Color Console TV, Blaupunkt Stereo System, 1950 Nutone house intercom, mercury thermostat, 4 handle tub/shower plumbing, American Standard Faucets, etc...

Without seeing that, it probably would never occur to kids growing up around consumer products with 6-24 month life cycles that things could still work many decades later.

And, we are allegedly concerned about the environment today....

Even excluding the batteries, it would be interesting to calculate the embodied energy going into just one month's production of cell phones.

Rgds, D.

3930dave · Jan 5, 2017

Industrial Toys said:
The Data acquisition rates of these government programs are just beyond comprehension.

40 years ago, if I wrote a story talking about people always carrying an object around with them that monitored all their movements AND all their communications AND that they willingly paid for this out of their own pockets, people would have thought I was nuts.

Any wonder why people are interested in things like Signal ?

Signal (software) - Wikipedia

Rgds, D.