Alexander Bell

[Rye Miles #13621]

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/alexander-graham-bell-patents-the-telephone

[Trailrider #896]

Don't you still call people on the "Ameche"? (Don Ameche played Bell in the movie.)  Also, if you got a lengthy long-distance call from someone, you'd say, "Shoot! It's your nickel!" Back when you could drop one in a pay phone. (I was about five when the nickel charge went to a dime!) Remember when there were phone booths? Nowadays where does Superman go to change clothes? 

[Cypress Sun]

 

I remember when they were a dime. Hence the adage, "Drop on dime on someone". These days, you can't even say "Here's a quarter, call someone who gives a s***."

 

I really wish that they have stayed cord connected.

[Rye Miles #13621]

Now you can block callers from ever calling you again from your cell phone. I wonder what Mr. Bell would have thought about cell phones?

[Pat Riot]

When I was a kid in 4th grade we got to tour the telephone company in my home town. We got to meet the Operators, the phone techs and the linemen. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. What most impressed me was all the wiring and relay panels. 
 

In 1970 my grandmother got a phone from someone in London England. The operator patched through a person to person call to “Mable” my Nanny’s name was Mable. She answered the phone and it turned out the lady in England had the wrong number. Apparently she waited so long to get the call through she and my Nanny spent a few minutes chatting. They actually became pen pals. That was pretty cool. Quite different from wrong numbers today. 
 

When my wife and I moved to CA in ‘83 she got a job at an answering service in Santa Monica. She answered calls for Charles Bronson, Jim Backus and some other actors. I never met them. I would have liked to have met them both. My wife said they were both very nice people. 
I got to check out their electrical panels and routers. Fairly low tech but very reliable and robust. 
A couple years later a friend of mine swung a deal to build all the panels and circuitry for a new answering service. After building 10 comm distribution panels my fascination with phone systems was pretty much over. 

[Eyesa Horg]

As a phone guy, I got to see quite a bit of the old moth balled equipment. Pretty cool. When I first started, the Operators still used "cord boards" and actually talked to you! One of the areas must of had 2 dozen Operators at least. They are/were amazing to watch!

Edited March 8 by Eyesa Horg
Typo

[Rye Miles #13621]

Remember “Party lines”??!

[Cypress Sun]

9 minutes ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Remember “Party lines”??!

 

I do.

Even after party lines were long gone, the early cordless phones were notorious for picking up other cordless phones in the immediate area. They could hear what you were talking about and you could hear their conversation also. Sometimes you'd have multiple people from different numbers on the line. I went back to a corded phone for a long time after that.

[Rye Miles #13621]

1 minute ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

I do.

Even after party lines were long gone, the early cordless phones were notorious for picking up other cordless phones in the immediate area. They could hear what you were talking about and you could hear their conversation also. Sometimes you'd have multiple people from different numbers on the line. I went back to a corded phone for a long time after that.

I don’t remember that ever happening here!

[Cypress Sun]

1 hour ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

I don’t remember that ever happening here!

 

It happened at an apartment complex that I lived in and later at a house that I rented. Same cordless phone in both instances. This was in the early and mid 80's.

Edited March 8 by Cypress Sun

[Eyesa Horg]

42 minutes ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

Remember “Party lines”??!

I had the pleasure,or displeasure as it were, as an Installer of pissing off party line customers! In the 70s most were all by themselves only paying for a party line. So the phone company decided we should put them back together again! In some areas we went to 4 party. People were not happy to have to share n remember which ring sequence was theirs and have someone else sharing it. Didn't take long and the company offered "measured service" at a little more than a party line, but cheaper than private. Most went to measured and eventually to private.

[Rye Miles #13621]

I think party lines went out here in sometime in the 60’s. Some still had it if they didn’t want to pay for a private line but they were a lot more affordable to most folks .

[Sedalia Dave]

I remember having a party line well into the 70's. At first there were 8 people and I remember it being a big deal when the phone company reduced it to 4. It was the late 70s before a private line was even an option. I also remember that there were a couple of people notorious for listening in on other peoples calls.

 

As for Cordless phones when I was stationed in Rota Spain with VQ-2 we soon discovered that the aircraft receivers would easily pick up the few cordless phones on base. One of which belonged to the CO of the base. We also had all the radio frequencies that base security used. My best friend was dating the security chiefs daughter. I used to drive him nuts when I would ask about certain events that occurred when the fleet was in port. For a while they were rechannelizing their radios about once a month and sometimes once a week. Finally after being cornered, I arranged for him to come out the the AC one night. The look on his face was priceless when I showed him how easily we could find and log the individual analog frequencies their radios were using. Basically we had a souped up version of a Bearcat scanner that could be programmed with the portion of the spectrum we wanted to scan and then it would go through and log every frequency where it detected a transmission. Program those into the scan plan and viola we could hear everything of interest.

 

When I was stationed as NAS Whidbey Island my Icom R7000 would receive all the 47-49 and 900 MHz analog cordless phones in the surrounding area. I lived on the higher ground part of the island and at times the receiver would pick up so many calls on the same frequency that they were just gibberish. It would also pick up analog cell phones but you could only listen to 1/2 of a conversation as the phones used separate up link and down link frequencies. BTW listening to other people's calls gets old really really fast

 

AFAIK analog cordless phones are a thing of the past. Most are using the DECT 6.0 digital format. Not only is is relatively secure from eves dropping but it also has very good range.

[Eyesa Horg]

Can you imagine being on a multi party line today? Your phone would never stop ringing with everybody getting scam calls. We typically get 20-40 a day and maybe 4 legit calls a week!

[Cold Lake Kid, SASS # 51474]

2 hours ago, Eyesa Horg said:

Can you imagine being on a multi party line today? Your phone would never stop ringing with everybody getting scam calls. We typically get 20-40 a day and maybe 4 legit calls a week!

 

With all the techies we have wouldn't it be nice if they came up with something we could add to our phones to make life miserable for those *^&))^%$'s?

I know, I'd buy something that did that.