Who remembers having to get a telephone operator to make a long distance call? Who wants to know what a telephone operator is? LOL
https://www.edn.com/tone-dialing-telephones-are-introduced-november-18-1963/
I bet there aren’t many people here who used party lines or were able to call people by dialing just the last 4 digits of their phone numbers, either.
How about calling in to try to win something on a radio giveaway but having to wait on that stupid rotary to work its way around?
Good times. 
1 Like
In the early 90s, Alpine Texas was still on 4 or 5 digits to make a local call. I don’t know when that changed (for all I know it may still be that way).
At the time, we still had to dial all 7 digits here in Houston. And remember all 7 digits.
1 Like
I still remember my home number, both of my grandmas’ numbers and several others I used to dial back in the 80s and 90s. Those numbers are apparently permanently etched in some part of my brain with other useless info.
2 Likes
I would rub my fingers raw on those radio contests because we had a metal rotary phone. And yes, we had a party line because we lived in the country. Totally different phone etiquette, and it sucked pretty hard.
1 Like
My aunt in MS lived on a farm and was also a switch board operator for southern bell in town. She knew pretty much everyone’s voice and was always telling a couple of noisy neighbors to get off her party line. In fact there wasn’t rotary, people had to count the ring series to hear if the call was theirs. Honor system haha. That was in the 50s in the rural south.
2 Likes
For Thanksgiving & Christmas when I was overseas, the Communication Workers of America put together a way to call home using radio & phone. It was just like a normal call except when you were done you had to say “over”. Then the other person would talk.
1 Like
I use those numbers that I will never forget for passwords…
And now we have phones in our watches…
Orchard 44960 in Jacinto City circa 1960
In the 1950’s we still had an Operator for all phone calls.
Late 1950’s we went Rotary.
Yes, I am old.
We had a part line. We had to maybe emergency break throughs a few times.
Ship to shore call. You can Mike those on a boat with a vhf radio