Vintage Telephony

General Discussion
1

Anyone here interested in what the world of telephony was way back in the past?

I actually really want an old Bell System rotary phone. Something about Bakelite and pulse dialing catches my fancy. When I saw that Kids React episode where they looked at the thing as if it’s a fossil, I kind of lost faith in humanity. Honestly, how hard is it to figure out something that’s obviously a phone?

DTMF also kind of interests me too. It’s strange to think that the “ringing” sound we hear when we call someone is just a chord of 440hz and 480hz, or how our current dial tone is literally a major third (A440 above F350), and how all those tones produced by the numbers are just two pitches on top of each other.

We just don’t see that with cell phones anymore, unfortunately…

2

After putting the frequencies into Audacity, I realized how much beating there really is in these tones. :lol:

I must have gotten used to them.

3

I have a vintage fire phone from the 1960’s that direct dialed to 911 when it and a few others was installed. At one point earlier in its history they dialed to a company fire brigade, but during a 1995 major remodeling project, they were rewired to 911. I would love to learn more about how older phone systems work to see if I could get this device to work (not with real 911 of course :lol: ).

4

This is about the extent of my vintage telephone collection - the old butt set still works, the other phone will work on “line 1” if I connect the blue/white pair to the phone line, but the lamps will not light up without an external power supply.

[attachment=0]telephones.jpg[/attachment]

5

I had a small collection of rotary phones as a kid, including some of those Bakelite ones. I used to have a wall-mounted one in my room back when we had a landline that supported pulse dialing, along with one of those antique wooden hand-crank phones. Who knows whatever happened to that collection. I do, however, still have a “collection” of outdated cell phones somewhere, including a Motorola DynaTac from the early 90’s that my family used to share.

6

Unfortunately, Time Warner Cable doesn’t support pulse dialing, so I’d have to build some sort of pulse to DTMF converter.
I didn’t know that DTMF had A-D tones until recently.

I recently saw a Jitterbug phone and when opened, you could hear a dial tone. I guess that’s to simulate the feeling of a landline for seniors who can’t quite grasp the concept of cell phones.

7

Back in the day, the were dreaming of what CS needed to interface telephones to computers. I have a interest in communication equipment

8

If you guys are interested in old telephone and electronic systems, search YouTube for “AT&T Archives” and you’ll find lots of old videos showing old technology.

Here’s one neat one I saw, it’s a silent (music, no talking) video of a 1ESS electronic telephone exchange being built and installed in the 1970s. Pretty neat.

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9

This 1958 American District Telegraph Co (A.D.T.) video shows how alarm systems were used to secure property. The film features many scenes of alarm and communications technology used in the 1950’s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAG8BWEa10

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10

Don’t make me post that Caddyshack clip again… :smiley:

Where’s the link?

11

EDIT
Forgot to add the URL lol

12

Our fairgrounds have a vintage telephony museum, it has everything from vintage home and cell phones to operator consoles and alarm bells. Also talking about the various phone tones, a while ago I made a Temporal 3 tone using the Off-Hook signal. (1400 Hz, 2060 Hz, 2450 Hz, and 2600 hertz) IMHO it actually makes a decent attention-getting signal.


Alert - semi-long file, loud. Feel free to use it as a custom tone, but please give me credit if you use it in a YT video.

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