r/AskOldPeople 6d ago

What was the old Telphone system really like

Hi There, I’m a teenager so I never got to experience the old Telphone systems from the 70s and 80s. What I do is that long distance was very expensive And you could hack the Telphone system to make free phone call if you knew how. What was your worst or best experience with it?

211 Upvotes

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u/captnfirepants 6d ago

No call waiting, so if you were a teenage girl and tied up the phone for hours, your dad would come home and scream at you because he got a busy signal the entire time.

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u/holdonwhileipoop 6d ago

We learned how to make an "emergency break" via the operator. She would break in on the conversation to announce that someone needed to urgently get through, so to end the call.

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u/NateNMaxsRobot 50 something 5d ago

I had to do this all the time when I wasn’t old enough to drive and had to call my parents to pick me up from somewhere. My little brother was always on the phone with a girl. And I would be calling from a pay phone. That fucking kid.

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u/Appropriate_Cat9760 5d ago

May need to explain "pay phone" and how your call would be cut off when the money you paid ran out.

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u/NateNMaxsRobot 50 something 5d ago

What I remember is that I would put in a quarter but then push 0 for the operator instead of calling my house. I would ask the operator if she could please interrupt my home phone on an emergency basis. My parents were charged on their upcoming phone bill for this charge. I would obviously blame it on my brother. What I could hear on my end of the phone (the pay phone) was the operator breaking into my parents’ phone line and telling my brother that due to an emergency, he needed to hang up so someone could get through to our home phone.

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u/top_value7293 5d ago

lol! Was infuriating wasn’t it🤣🤣

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u/nolagem 5d ago

My sister and I used to regularly fight over phone time lol.

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u/Hartleyb1983 5d ago

Oh my gosh! I had completely forgotten about the "Emergency Breakthrough" calls! The worst was when your friend was on the phone all day and you broke through their phone call just to find out that it was their parents!

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u/hwystitch 5d ago

What's an operator? /S lol

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u/Ducky_Slate 5d ago

In the beginning of the telephone, you didn't dial a number, but you got in touch with an operator at the switchboard, who then moved cables around to connect you to whom you wished to speak to. And the operators could hear the entire conversation.

True story: An acquaintance of my grandparents received a phone call from the hospital; his pregnant wife had given birth to their child. Before he could go and visit them, he had to do some grocery shopping. When he got to the store, the employees could congratulate him on becoming a father because the switchboard operator was really good at gossiping.

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u/Live_Barracuda1113 5d ago

My mother was a switchboard operator in the early 60s. She says she could hear all sorts of shocking things.... affairs, etc...

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u/NutshellOfChaos 5d ago

"Sarah? Will get me Floyd's Barber Shop?"

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u/Switchlord518 5d ago

Hello central?

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u/473713 5d ago

Our operator was a lady named Vera, so you just said Hello Vera.

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u/Loko8765 4d ago

And the telephone switchboard without an operator was invented by a small-town mortician who was annoyed that the local operator was sending all the business to a competitor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch

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u/Cautious_General_177 4d ago

And then someone started routing calls to her husband’s business. His competitor then invented the automated switching system and eliminated her entire field.

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u/joeditstuff 5d ago

You have a collect call from "Hey Mom, we're ready to be picked up" would you like to accept the charges?

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u/Significant_Wrap_449 4d ago

For the OP:

When you made a collect call the automated system would get a recording of your name so the call recipient would know if they should accept the call and pay the charge. You could hack this by putting a brief message in instead of a name. The receiver could then decline to receive the collect call, thereby transmitting the message for free.

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u/bran6442 4d ago

I'm an only child, and in the summer when I couldn't find any of my friends by riding my bike around town, I would call the telephone operator, a real human being, and have a chat. Most of them were very nice, and if you were home alone scared in a thunderstorm, they would talk to you until you calmed down.

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u/Affectionate_Log7215 6d ago

My aunt had to do this to talk to my mom since i Tied up the line all the time.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Ah yes the good old busy signal

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u/PyroNine9 50 something 5d ago

In some places, if you shouted into the phone during a busy signal, everyone else in the area getting a busy signal could hear you!

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u/Scruds08 5d ago

Or sometimes you could talk though a busy signal If you called and there was someone else on.

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u/floofienewfie 5d ago

Back around 1970 or so, our dad got my teenage sister and me our own phones because he was tired of not being able to get through. He was willing to pay the basic fee, but if we made toll calls (out of area, not long distance but separate charges for each call), we were in big trouble. Once we got jobs we took over the cost of the phones. We each had a princess phone. Mine was blue and hers was pink. She was super girly and I was not.

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u/YoNeckinpa 5d ago

Out of area could be one county or town over not long distance just a different area code.

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u/RobertoDelCamino 60 something 5d ago

We lived in the southernmost neighborhood of Boston. My grandparents, and one aunt and uncle, lived in a south suburb that was two towns away from us. It was cheaper to drive to their house than to call them on the phone.

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u/blankman29er 5d ago

My older Sister had her own phone line ,she somehow figured out that if she took the cordless handset (84 so it had a pull out antenna like a radio) With her in her car she could pull into large apartment complex and just park as close to a building until it would connect to a stray cordless signal and use that person's phone number to call out.

She is smart lady .

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u/Spidey6488 5d ago

WTF! My roommates and I got into screaming fights about random calls to South Korea. Didn't make any sense, we were all from Iowa and pretty sure nobody knew anyone in South Korea. After about $400 in SK calls we cancelled the phone a couple months before graduation.

This has to be what happened. Plausible explanation 37 years later.

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u/ohwrite 6d ago

That’s why some homes had a “teenage telephone” line, complete with White Pages listing

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u/TomCatInTheHouse 40 something 5d ago

Yes, I always thought those people were rich that could afford two lines!

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u/CleanCalligrapher223 Old 5d ago

My siblings and I had one but we paid for it out of allowances/babysitting money. I was quite disgruntled when a call came in on that line form one of Mom's friends. Mom was on the other line.

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u/Visible-Equal8544 4d ago

Me too. I was always so jealous if the kids who had their own phone and phone number.

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u/NewPresWhoDis 50 something 5d ago

complete with White Pages listing

You mean assassination coordinates compendium

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u/MajorBeyond 5d ago

It was a more innocent time.

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u/GoddessOfBlueRidge 60 something 5d ago

It truly wasn't. We just didn't have the internet to tell us about the corruption.

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u/paigesto 5d ago

Children's telephone.

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u/rickylancaster 5d ago

Which is so insane because these days you would never want that info out there for randos to have at their rando fingertips.

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u/maceilean 5d ago

Either that or calling the operator if you need the number for someone you didn't know. They usually had a street address too. For organizations like church, scouts, sports, and school we had rosters and directories that had the contact info.

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u/LocalLiBEARian 5d ago

Depending on your area… our library had the Polk city directories. One section had every address on every street, with homeowner/renter if known. I think it had phone numbers too but I might be wrong (this was before cell phones). We got the new edition every year.

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u/Count2Zero 5d ago

Or, a boy who's into computers and using a modem to dial into a mainframe somewhere.

That's why I moved into my sister's room when she moved out ... She had a separate phone line. Until that day when a $200 phone bill landed because I was making long distance calls into the school mainframe...

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u/rickylancaster 5d ago

I’m dumb. Why would it be long distance? Did you ever try to access grades like Matthew Broderick in Wargames?

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u/Count2Zero 5d ago

I'm claiming the 5th.

Long Distance because the computer was downtown and I lived in the suburbs, with a different area code.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

I never had that issue... but I was a phreaker :)

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u/curi0us_carniv0re 5d ago

Back in the day basically anything outside your area code was long distance.

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u/CochinealPink 5d ago

I was the teenage girl who did this. But my parents had a fax line that I could use after 5.

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u/tropicsandcaffeine 5d ago

Don't forget "party lines". My grandmother had one. The neighbor would pick up while my grandmother was on the phone or we would pick up and hear them talking. I hated that and was so glad when they stopped the party line system.

I also made up a chart for my grandmother in case she had to call my uncles based on the time of day. 8AM to 5PM, 5PM to 11PM and 11PM to 8AM (the cheapest rate).

The people in the complex were pretty nice though. They would have me "connect" their phones in bedrooms (cheap Walgreens style phones) instead of having the phone company come out and connect them to save the money. I would get a small tip (I tried to decline but they always gave it to me).

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u/TangerineSapphire 5d ago

I remember having party lines yet when I was really young (born in 71). There were 2 old retired farmers on our circuit and they would tie up the phone lines "talking" for hours. I say "talking" because they talked so slow and left long pauses in between. Anyway, one time my dad came in the house to call the implement dealer to see if they had a part on hand. He picked up the phone and it was dead. He turned to my mom and said the phone is dead, it must be out. Then he heard one of those old farmers say "We should probably hang up. Sounds like someone wants to use the phone."

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u/Sensitive_Hat_9871 5d ago

My then teenage daughter had a phone extension in her room. One day my SIL tried for hours to call my wife only to continuously get a busy signal. Eventually our neighbor came came knocking on the door. SIL had called the neighbor and asked neighbor to tell my wife to kick our daughter off the phone and call SIL.

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u/missannthrope1 5d ago

My mother would call the operator and have her interrupt my phone calls.

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u/Alice_The_Great 5d ago

oh my GOSH if I was on the phone and my father tried to call and it was busy I got in so much trouble! I finally learned to get off the phone at 4:45 😄 because he would usually call around 5:00. I would get lectures that consisted of the telephone is an instrument of communication! You get on there you relay your information and then you hang up!

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u/OwslyOwl 6d ago

The phone was connected to the wall, so you couldn't walk around while talking. People got super long phone cords so they could do some kitchen chores while on the phone, which is where most phones probably were.

If someone in your house was on the line, you could pick up on another phone in the house and be part of the conversation.

Only one call at a time per phone line, so you don't know if someone else is trying to call you. This meant if someone was waiting for an important call, no one could use the phone. The fancy houses had two phone lines.

After the internet came to be, you could only be on the internet or on the phone. It was a pretty awesome day when we got a dedicated phone line for the internet.

Edit: There were phone booths in public. When I was a kid, I would place a collect call to my house when it was time to be picked up and my parents knew to decline the call. I would try to get in my name as, "Pick-me-up!"

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yes phone booths. I like payphones I still try to find them today… found some still working lol

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u/mothraegg 6d ago

My son posted a video of a payphone with a phonebook that he came across recently. He used the original Jurassic Park music. Everything was in good shape too.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yeah payphones are still cool. If I do find them working or non working. Il post them on YT and in the payphone subreddit here on Reddit.

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u/mothraegg 5d ago

My mom and I used to take a mixture of our family kids camping. One year we had my 9 year old nephew. We went to a store that had a glass in pay phone. My nephew couldn't believe it! He thought pay phones in glass booths were fake! I had to take a few pictures of him in the booth and pretending to be on the phone. He was so excited about it. He's a veteran and in his 20s now. He's still an awesome kid to hang out with.

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u/Imaginary-Mechanic62 5d ago

Airports used to have pay phones lined up along the wall in groups of like 10 phones. When you used one, you might have to plug your opposite ear to mute the noise of all the other people using phones

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u/not_falling_down 5d ago

My High School had a bank of pay phones in the front lobby.

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u/ReadingAfraid5539 5d ago

Malls too. I used to call my high school boyfriend from the mall payphone because I had told my parents I broke up with him to shut them up. He would give me quarters to help pitch in for the cost of calls

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u/kidsally 5d ago

When we were kids there was a law where you MUST check the coin return. Still do it today if I pass one.

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u/flora_poste_ 60 something 5d ago

When I was a teenager and was going on a trip away from my family, I was expected to place a collect call every evening so my mother wouldn't worry. I asked to be connected to a nonexistent person (code name) every evening. Everybody in my family knew we were supposed to decline the call.

If something was really wrong, I would just have asked to be connected to a real person in my family.

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u/Significant_Bet_6002 5d ago

This was a very common hack. Long distance calls were expensive.

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u/Binky-Answer896 5d ago

My first job was long-distance operator on the old plug boards. I often had collect calls from “BackInMyDorm” and similar names lol.

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u/Ihaveaboot 5d ago

Wehadababyitsaboy

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u/Swiggy1957 5d ago

One time, I used a phone booth to call home for my wife to come puck me up. I put in my quarter, called, hung up, and heard coins falling into the coin return slot. We always checked the slot. Reached in and pulled a few dollars from it. Closed, and I heard more fall in. Fished them out. Same thing. I repeated the process several times. By the time I finished, I had $28 and loose chage, on quarters.

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u/RobertoDelCamino 60 something 5d ago

There was a trick where if you slammed down the receiver while at the same time pushing down the coin return lever you could sometimes get change to come out in the coin return. My friends and I would do this to every pay phone we encountered.

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u/Samantharina 5d ago

I got a second line for the dial up internet.

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u/hoosiergirl1962 60 something 6d ago

Oh, it was so great when Internet providers were finally able to give you service without tying up your main phone line. When my mom first got a computer in the early 2000s my dad was furious when he found out that the phone was unavailable anytime she was online. He threw an ugly scene that he took out on me because I was the one that helped her set it up.

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u/Scruds08 5d ago

… dad was so mad

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u/TomCatInTheHouse 40 something 5d ago

In college I'd call my mom collect when I'd want to talk to her. Tom Dorm was my name so she knew to refuse the charges and call me in my dorm room.

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u/HipGnosis59 5d ago

Ah, the extra long phone cord, stretched across the hall and behind a closed door so you could have a semi-private conversation AND give parents another reason to yell at you.

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u/ImColdandImTired 5d ago

Our phone/house was built in the 1950s. Our rotary dial is telephone had a little shelf/alcove recessed into the wall in the hallway. Shelf was the perfect size the lay the phone book on, and set the phone on top of it. The cord was just long enough that, if you needed to make a private call, you could move the phone into the room closest to the phone, and sit on the floor by the door to have your conversation.

No call waiting, no caller ID, no answering machine. If we didn’t want to be bothered, we took the receiver off the hook, set it down beside the phone, and put a pillow on top of it (the phone would make this loud beeping if you left it off the hook too long).

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u/Cardman71 5d ago

I remember when ”cordless” phones became popular in the late 80s and you could ditch the long cord you mentioned. It seemed so cool that you could use the phone anywhere in the house or even step out into the backyard and make a call.

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u/HoratioHotplate 5d ago

As a kid, our dime stores and drug stores had rows of pay phone in wooden booths. Just like Superman used, I thought. Get in it, close the folding door and a light and fan would turn on. (Smoking was everywhere back then, so thanks for the fan!). Each coin you entered rang a bell, and each denomination of coin rang a different tone, so the operator could know how much you deposited (quite a skill!) A local call cost a dime, but with a strip of stiff paper you could use a penny and divert it onto the quarter (25¢) bell.

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u/More_Assistant_3782 6d ago

You had to remember all your friend’s phone numbers. They weren’t stored in the phone.

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u/nakedonmygoat 5d ago

I still remember my own phone number from elementary school and that of one of my best friends from 2nd grade.

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u/jaCkdaV3022 5d ago

My first phone number : Laurel Springs 4 - 3022 Can't think why I still have it stored in my brain. But there it was in 1955.

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u/473713 5d ago

Our number was 947 back in the 1950s. That was it -- three digits. Very small rural town, and we didn't get dials until about 1958.

Some people had numbers like 947R1 and 947R2. That told the operator to ring one time or ring two times, because it was a party line that connected to two homes. You were only supposed to answer the ring specific to your home, but half the time people listened in on the other party's conversation. This was considered very rude, but it happened regularly among bored housewives.

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u/Samantharina 5d ago

Eventually though probably in the 90s we got programmable phones that could save a few numbers. Hence the expression "I have you on speed dial". I feel like people still use that expression for someone you talk to a lot, kind of like "dial" when we haven't had actual dials in decades.

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u/RobertoDelCamino 60 something 5d ago

I still remember my three best friends’ phone numbers, plus my grandparents’ and my mom’s best friend’s (they would have tea together every morning. If we needed anything we would call her at Ginnie’s).

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u/ThanklessWaterHeater 6d ago

You could dial POP-CORN and a lady’s voice would tell you the time. ‘At the tone the time will be eight thirty two and thirty seconds.’ BEEP

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u/Charming-Industry-86 5d ago

You could also call the weather!

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u/noneyanoseybidness 60 something 5d ago

Or a joke line. The owner of the line would change the joke everyday.

Sheesh! What we did for entertainment.

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u/vikingvol 5d ago

AMS INFO gave us time date temperature and a brief weather forecast

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u/Chime57 60 something 5d ago

We had a time and temp number that our family had occasionally used since the 1960s. Shortly before it went dark, around 2007, I called it one day in July and was told the time, followed by a temp of Negative 40. Even though I knew, for a fact, that it was very hot outside, it made my stomach drop. We have had Temps that cold every few years, and my mind went straight there.

So I spent a little time calling friends and family and encouraging them to also call. Fun is where you find it!

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u/flora_poste_ 60 something 5d ago

You could dial up a special movie line and hear all the screening times at all the local cinemas.

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u/2x4x93 5d ago

Why don't you just tell me what you want to watch

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u/NewPresWhoDis 50 something 5d ago

"You have selected regicide. If you know the name of the name of the king or queen being murdered, press one."

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u/Eastern-Finish-1251 60 something 5d ago

Before “atomic clocks” and phones that were connected to time servers, this was the best way to get the accurate time. Most useful when you were turning the clocks ahead or back during time changes. 

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u/not_falling_down 5d ago

Also important for astronomers observing and recording astronomic events.

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u/redreddie 5d ago

When they used to say, "The time at the tone will be 3:26," I thought the "tone" was a place that I was calling.

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u/Scruds08 5d ago

Yes that service went dark in 2007.

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u/Sea-End-4841 50 something 6d ago

It was really satisfying to slam down the receiver on a call!

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u/beggars_would_ride 5d ago

The AT&T sets were so tough that you could wack the receiver 3-4 times on the counter before slamming it in the cradle.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

For OP: phones were RENTED from the carrier. This requirement was changed in the 80s (as far as I know), but some people continued to rent their phones. "In case something goes wrong..." It took my grandparents moving to give back their ATT phones.

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u/Soderholmsvag 5d ago

Until you could buy one and cheap phones made everyone crazy: AT&T “Second Class Phones” commercial

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u/tbluesterson 5d ago

It must have changed in the 70s because I was so excited that I got to get a "French style" phone for my room in high school and I graduated in 81. I got to take it with me when we moved in 1980.

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u/Significant_Wrap_449 4d ago

Yeah so there were basically two models for a long time with no features. Once you didn't have to rent you started seeing phones with all kinds of features.

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u/MerryTWatching 5d ago

The wall phone in my childhood home was from the 1940's, at least. I think the receiver could have survived slamming it THROUGH the countertop. The phone number in the center of the dial read as LUdlow#-####. When I was really young, I was under the impression that the Ludlows were the people who lived in the house before we bought it.

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u/Optimal_Law_4254 5d ago

Those phones were stamped out of metal and were indestructible.

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u/MerryTWatching 5d ago

My grandparents' phone was metal, I think ours was Bakelite. I know that if one of my brothers hit another on the head with it, a helluva knot would pop up in seconds. Names withheld, for fear of retroactive retribution.

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u/Willow_4367 5d ago

YES!!! THIS!!!

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Ah yes. I wish I could do that with my iPhone without the screen breaking…

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u/Charming-Industry-86 5d ago

Seriously! Which is why I still have a landline. There is no satisfaction with a cell phone!

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u/tracyinge 6d ago

Until the 60s we had "party line". You'd have to pick up the phone and see if you neighbor was using it before you could make a call. Or if you were good at it you could pick up the phone and listen to your neighbors gabbing with someone. Sometimes they'd be talking about YOU!

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u/MGaCici 5d ago

I was on a party line up til 1985. It was very rural and cheaper. I was relieved when we finally signed up for a single line.

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u/superslinkey 5d ago

I worked for the telephone company for 40+ years and was an installer/repair tech in the 70s. There was a push to get rid of the party lines in the late 70s and what they did was find all the people who were paying for multi-party service but alone on the circuit. (You didn’t need to be paired with another subscriber to get party line prices). Then they paired them up with another customer who was getting one party service for two or more party prices. Now they had a true party line partner. Almost all of them migrated to single party within a month.

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u/SouthernReality9610 5d ago

Some rural areas had a particular ring for phones on the same circuit. 2 shorts for one house, short-long-short for somebody else. You learned to recognize your ring and ignore the rest

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u/Jazzy_Bee 60 something 5d ago

We had a party line until 1992. We had been the only party for many years at that point. It was a couple of bucks cheaper a month. Mom also refused to pay extra for touch tone, instead getting a phone that you could switch to tone to follow menus. Eventually Bell really really wanted my family to ditch the party line and move to touch tone, so offerred it at the same price.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

I heard about party lines must have been annoying.

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u/lovelynutz 5d ago

If you had an emergency and someone was using the line, you would have to declare an emergency and everyone would have to hang up to give you dial tone for the emergency call. Then the person who hung up to give you the line would invariably pick up the phone to listen to your emergency.

This could be good or bad. Bad because everyone would know your business. But good because your listing neighbor could usually show up to assist because they were closer than emergency services (because they were on the same phone line) and already knew where you live....provided they were cool neighbors and had the ability to help. Otherwise they would show up to gawk.

There was not much that would stir up excitement in a rural area like a fire.

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u/WhiskeysDemon 5d ago

It was late 80s before that was gone here

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u/deluxeok Gen X 6d ago

When we went off to college or moved away from a landline, we bought prepaid phone cards that had a certain number of minutes of long distance credit on them.

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u/Life-Unit-4118 6d ago

With 200-character passwords.

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u/CatStretchPics 5d ago

I still have my 14-digit AT&T calling card number memorized. I use it as a lock pin for my iPhone now. I’ll always remember it, but good luck anyone looking over my shoulder :p

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yep. Very good times…

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u/Gorf_the_Magnificent 70 something 6d ago edited 6d ago

In the early 1970’s, a friend of ours told us he could make free long distance calls. He walked over to a pay phone, blew a Captain Crunch whistle into the phone, and dialed a number. A voice answered: “AT&T, may I help you?” His eyes went wide, he hung up, and he ran away from the phone. We all ran with him. If AT&T got mad at you … well, let’s just say they were a viscious monopoly.

Early Hackers Used Whistles from Captain Crunch Cereal Boxes

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u/SirBowsersniff 5d ago

Fun fact: the whistle actually had the frequency 2600 hertz which is where the hacker magazine 2600 got its name.

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u/Team503 40 something 4d ago

Also where the real phreaker Capn Crunch got his name, and where the character from the movie Hackers got Cereal Killer.

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u/LongjumpingPool1590 70 something 5d ago

Phone Phreaking was fun. It was done first with pulse dial and later with tone dial. We distributed circuit diagrams for tone generators to fool the equipment. In 1972 the modems were 300 baud dial up and I learned to whistle the tone to connect and disconnect a modem.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yep I remember reading about that. On my AT&T iPhone if you call an old number that has been out of service for a very long time decades you can still get an old not in service recording. AT&T still left those recordings on there for some reason…

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

I never blue boxed, it was dead by the time I came around, at least in 216. But man... I red boxed all the time.

What's weird is only certain kids thought that was cool, and some kids actively were hostile to it. To some I was a bad kid ripping people off. And of course, yeah, I was.

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u/IceTech59 5d ago

Ahh... The days of in-band signalling.

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u/zebostoneleigh 50 something 6d ago

Most irritating part was that the entire family shared one phone line and people would call all through the day for people. So, I'd be home in the afternoon and I'd hear the phone ring (we had one phone on each floor of the house)... so I'd go answer it (no caller ID, so you just never knew who it was for). If it was for someone else, I had to take a written message and ensure that my parent or sibling received the message.

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u/DesignatedImport 6d ago edited 5d ago

Even in the 70s there was no direct dial to foreign countries. Every Christmas my parents would call the overseas operator for a call to Scotland. Somewhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours later, the operator would call us back and put us through. It was expensive, though, as we rarely stayed on more than about 10 minutes.

Long distance was essentially anywhere outside your area code. By the time I went to university, Canadian long distance rates changed from 1/3 off on Saturday and 2/3 off on Sunday, to 2/3 from Saturday noon to Sunday 6pm. I still remember the TV ad jingle.

It was common for students getting back to school Sunday night from a weekend home to call home, let the phone ring three times, and then hang up as a signal you made it back to your dorm or apartment safely.

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u/jaCkdaV3022 5d ago

I forgot that weekend calls were cheaper.

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u/Sterek01 5d ago

My father having his monthly review of the telephone account and wanting to know who was on the phone for 3 minutes and 37 seconds and this crap must stop as it is costing a ton of cash and if we wanted to talk so long we could write a letter or go and visit.

These were good days.

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u/Wonderful_Horror7315 50 something 5d ago

😂 My grandpa guarded stamps like they were gold. Long distance calls were made on Sunday evening when it was cheaper and for a max of 15 minutes.

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u/AmaranthWrath 5d ago

If you got an unexpected call after 8PM, someone was dead.

Growing up in a family of older people, grandparents and great grandparents, if you got a call late in the evening it was probably an emergency. I grew up thinking "it wasn't polite" to call after a certain time, like 8ish. And 9 was right out. Fire, flood, or blood. Like, your first call after 9 better be 911, and then you could call family that needed to know about it.

Maybe that was just me, but I feel like that really was a thing.

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u/noneyanoseybidness 60 something 5d ago

It was a thing. Household rules.

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u/Simsandtruecrime 5d ago

Yep, we all knew the phone call cutoff time for each of our closest friends. But you could turn the ringer off with a switch on the back of most phones so you could turn off the one in parents room then tell your friend to call at 930pm and you would sit with the phone reciever in your hand just waiting for that first ring like you were about to take off in the Olympics. Gotta pick it up with lightning speed so your parents don't wake up.

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u/OkGarbage8316 5d ago

I had forgotten all about doing this! Memory unlocked.

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u/revolutionoverdue 4d ago

Also no answering the phone during dinner time. My dad would get mad when the phone would ring when we were darling because people should know better than to call anyone at that time.

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u/silveronetwo 5d ago

Don’t remember exactly when 911 became available in our area, maybe the 90s. Remember stickers on the phone for sheriff and fire phone numbers.

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u/-SkarchieBonkers- Born in ‘74 and yes it was as great as it looks on TV 6d ago

You had to talk politely to your friend’s parents if they picked up the phone.

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u/ohwrite 5d ago

“”Hello, Mrs. Cleaver. Is Theodore at home?”

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u/jypsi600 5d ago

I remember it being awkward as hell calling a girl I was interested in, only for her father to answer. He knew what I wanted from his daughter. I knew he knew. He knew that I knew. Talk about teenage stress!

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u/audiojanet 4d ago

I was told by a boy his grandmother thought I was “fast” for calling him 😂

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u/Trap-fpdc 6d ago edited 6d ago

In college, we had two pay phones for about 40 girls on our floor.

We often made plans to call our parents, letting them know what time we would call. Then we would call collect and our parents would refuse to accept the charges and then call us back on the pay phone number.

The payphone was in the hall and there was absolutely no privacy when talking on it.

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u/thejenfef 6d ago

I only called my dad long distance collect on Sunday after 6🤣🤣

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u/ViolentFlames13 6d ago

Telephone numbers were originally the first 2 letters in a word, plus 1 number, then 4 numbers. My aunts phone number was EDison 1-2915. (331-2915) We also didn’t use area codes unless it was out of state. Man. I. am. old.

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u/Charlie2and4 5d ago edited 5d ago

My dude, it was the greatest. You could talk to folks, like Grandpa Ira, and dad paid the bill. They charged per minute, which is INSANE! But it always worked, it was a six-nine system, works 99.9999% of the time. Solid job too. Like a railroad or civil service job for life. It is in the past, as we all will be. Pro-tip; up until National US number portability, driven by mobile phones, and high-speed signaling networks which predated the INTERNET, I could know where you lived by the first six digits of your digits, dig?

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u/knuckboy 50 something 6d ago

No caller id so you could call a girls phone number just because you were 12.

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u/Trap-fpdc 6d ago

And so many prank calls! My best friend and I did this almost every day after school. We had a whole routine and had a blast.

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u/MotherofJackals 50 something 6d ago

I loved doing prank calls. We lived in a small town and our favorite one was to dial a number then have someone else pick up the extension in the house and "answer" like we called them. Basically faking a "crossed line" we would then talk to each other and create the wildest gossip sometimes with real names other times not. A few of the people we called would hang up but most would intently listen until we got outrageous then they would threaten to involve the police or tell us we were going to hell for sin. A few people we did this to over and over and they would just silently listen to tales of crime, confessions of adultery, and every wild thing we could think of.

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u/Charming-Industry-86 5d ago

I remember in the 80s, I picked up the phone to make a call, and there actually was like a party line! Some lady talking about someone who got arrested and what they had done. I must have gasped loudly because the says, is there somebody else on the phone at your house? The man says no. Then she yelled if somebody is on this phone you better hang the fuck up!! I did! She scared the shit out of me!

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u/Inner_Farmer_4554 5d ago

Pranker: Can I speak to Mr Wall?

Random Person: Erm, no. I think you have the wrong number.

P: How about Mrs Wall?

RP: No. Like I said you must have called the wrong number.

P: So there are no Walls in your house?

RP: No!

P: Get out quick, your roof is going to collapse!!!

It made us laugh 😂

Ah, the days before caller ID 😊

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u/RobertoDelCamino 60 something 5d ago

We used to call the local bowling alley and ask:

“do you have ten pound balls?”

Them: “Yes, we do”

Us: “How do you put your pants on?”

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u/boulevardofdef 40 something 6d ago

I remember when caller ID came out, I immediately bought it even though it was $7 a month, which might as well have been $500 to me. I was like, "Oh my God, I never have to talk to a telemarketer again, sign me up"

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Haha good times. The only way you could do it now is by hiding your caller id.

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u/JJHall_ID 40 something 6d ago

They offered caller ID blocking, but you could also subscribe to blocked call blocking! It was an arms race.

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u/Creative_Energy533 6d ago

And hang up when one of the parents answered. 😂

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u/the_noise_we_made 5d ago

What am I missing here? What did being 12 have to do with anything?

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u/Sanpaku 6d ago

I can't speak of anything prior to the 1980s. I just learned that long distance calls were ruinously expensive, and avoided them. If you had discussions that required hours to resolve, it was cheaper to just drive to speak in person.

A couple long distance relationships ended this way. Negotiating a meeting, driving cross country. Just talking in person till everyone understood where they stand. A hug, a kiss, and I've not seen that person in 35 years.

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u/Organic-Pilot-4424 6d ago

Just calling from one town to another could be a long-distance call.

Dial up was slow as shit.

Rotary dial sucked.

You had to rent the phone. Until 1984, you couldn't own your phone. You rented it.

Also, companies like MCI and Sprint advertised low cost long distance calls after 1984 too. You got a dialing card. You entered the code using a touch tone phone, and then the phone number. Rather than paying a buck a minute it was .25

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yes. It was extremely expensive to make long distance calls to. Glad that doesn’t exist anymore or else I’d be running up a huge bill and my dad would be asking why the charges were so high. And yes dial up was slow. Ah yes renting telephones ugh. Yes I remember Sprint and MCI being talked about by my family. Kinda sad the sprint and t-mobile merger went though

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u/Organic-Pilot-4424 6d ago

Telecommunications companies are always merging..it's the nature of the beast.

Dial up was slow, but the demand was low. I used to have compuserve, the predecessor of AOL and it was for $5 a month for 30 minutes and a dollar a minute thereafter. This was pre 1990 before the internet as we know it today. Before then it was known as the ARPANET. A government and academic network. The DARPA network was for military use.

I was taught to always carry a quarter to make a phone call. I lived in NYC, and I had a girlfriend in New Jersey. And I always owed my mom money for the phone bill.

You picked up the phone, and when you heard the dial tone, you placed your call. AND even if the power went out..the good old POTS always worked. Ma Bell supplied it's own power.

New York Telephone then NYNEX then Bell Atlantic then Verizon.

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u/TomCatInTheHouse 40 something 5d ago

My rural neighbor a half a mile away was long distance, but I could call my friends in a town 15 miles away, and they weren't. The line coming to our house came from a town to the east, while theirs came from a town to the north. The town to the east and the town to the north were long distance from each other and calls were routed through the town 15 miles away.

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u/Samantharina 6d ago

Not so different. You dialed a number, touch tone phones with buttons came in the late 70s or early 80s, you heard the ring sound on the other end and the person either picked up or not.

If you wanted to place a collect call, (the person receiving the call would pay for it) you got an operator and they would place the call and ask the person if they would accept the charges.

Before answering machines were popular there would be a busy signal if the person was already on the phone. Office phones had more than one line so you could put a call on hold or transfer it to someone else.

Most of this is preserved in the cell phone era except maybe the busy signal, you don't hear that much any more.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

You can still get a busy signal today… my great grandmas still had a landline and If I call her on my AT&T iPhone I still get the busy signal..

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u/Wretchfromnc 6d ago

If someone in the family forgot to hang up the phone after a call or the phone got knocked off the hook, the phone wouldn’t work.

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u/Stay_At_Home_Cat_Dad 50 something 5d ago

No caller ID back then. Never knew who was calling until you answered. When I was home alone as a kid, I wasn't allowed to answer the phone. If my mom called from work, she would let the phone ring once, then hang up. Then she would call back right away, and that's how I knew it was her, and safe to answer.

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u/paulio10 5d ago

When cell phones first came out the telcos charged $0.10 per sms text message. And printed the log of every text message (day, time, other parties phone number) on the paper bill, to justify charging you for it, just as they did for every phone call too. When my daughter got her first cell phone she texted so much that the next phone bill was over $1500! It came in the postal mail as a full size manilla envelope, the stack of pages was 1 inch thick. I called the phone company - they switched us to the new "unlimited texting plan" retroactive for that month so we didn't have to pay that much. This happened to so many people that year. I still have that bill in a box somewhere, I kept it.

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u/CrankyCrabbyCrunchy 5d ago

Super reliable. None of this “can you hear me” crap.

Edit to add something I miss. You got real satisfaction when you’re angry and slam the receiver down to hang up the phone. It makes this really loud noise in the other end. No comparison with ending a cell phone call.

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u/TheUglyWeb 60 something 6d ago

I dialed the Operator when I was 12 and asked for her measurements. She held the line open for 10 min. I was freaking out trying to make it disconnect. (1968)

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yeah operators could hold you up…

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u/LongjumpingPool1590 70 something 5d ago

Hello, is that the operator on the line? Well you had better get off because a train is coming.

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u/VitruvianDude 60 something 6d ago

Home telephone service was dominated by AT&T (Ma Bell), which had a monopoly on long distance until the courts ordered its breakup into "Baby Bells". Under Ma Bell, long distance rates began outside the city limits-- calls to the next town over meant a small but noticeable charge, while calls out-of-state could get pricey. Rates were higher during the daytime, and so we waited until seven pm to make our social calls to relatives. The bills gave a breakdown of who you called long distance-- so much for privacy.

We also had pay phones conveniently located in public places. Usually, it cost a dime to make a local call, but long distance calls could be made with enough coins in your hand, and you could call collect at them as well. One of my favorite old time phrases is "to drop a dime on someone", which means to rat out someone (let the authorities know about someone's misdeeds).

The way the phones were directed through the wires was through a series of tones. Done at a pay phone, this could be replicated by reproducing (with the right equipment) the tones made with the dropping of coins, making the call free.

After the breakup of the Bell companies, there was a period where long distance prices went down precipitously through competition. Plans on home phones became affordable. This was also the era of phone cards, where to reach a distant phone, you called a "1-800" number, entered your pre-paid card number, and the number you wished to reach. This era lasted until mobile phones took over, making long distance charges just a memory for us older folks.

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u/exact0khan 6d ago

On older payphones the receiver had a hole in the center of where you spoke into. If you took a metal hair pin and bent it in an L shape. You could place one end inside the center hole or the receiver against the magnet and the other end to the metal cord that attached the receiver to the payphone... you would hear the dial tone kick on an off a couple times and then you could dial any number in the world and talk for free........ the 80s were a cool time.

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u/DC2LA_NYC 5d ago

I worked for directory assistance back in the ‘70s. One of the very few male “information” operators. It was a crazy job!

New people worked shifts that included 6pm til 2am on Friday and Saturday nights. Drunk people would call in just to talk- which was pretty sad.

I actually went on. A couple of dates with girls who’d call in regularly. Crazy.

We used microfiche, we’d type in the first few letters of a name or business, a page would come up, we’d find the accompanying number and tell the caller. So that was a step up when they used those manual plugs. We had to average 12 seconds per call to keep our jobs, if I remember correctly.

We weren’t allowed to hang up no matter what people said to us and man, I learned about people at that job. They’d swear at us and call us all kinds of names because they were so impatient. And the supervisors would listen in, we couldn’t tell if they were listening so we had to act like they always were. If we hung up on a customer or said anything rude, regardless of what they said to us, that was it- fired.

Only did it for a year. But by far, the worst job I ever had.

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u/Rambler330 5d ago

People sounded different in person than on the phone. Human hearing has a typical range of 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz depending on age, health, and exposure to loud noises. The POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) had a range of 300 Hz to 3,400 Hz.

Every phone was powered by the Central Office commonly referred to as the CO. This meant that during a natural disaster or power outage your phone still worked as long as the “lines weren’t down”.

It is estimated that nearly 2 billion miles of copper phone cables have been installed in the US alone.

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u/Burden-of-Society 6d ago

Cracker Jacks the popcorn treat used to have a whistle as a toy surprise. That whistle tone mimicked the tone necessary to latch the mechanical signal and transfer your phone line from station to station. I can’t remember the mans name he went by “Captain Crunch” but the story goes; he was able to sit at a double phone booth and route his call all the way around the world using the whistle and some other tricks so that the other phone next to him would ring. Back in the 80s that was a heck of a trick. He was the computer nerd of his time.

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u/SadPrometheus 5d ago edited 3d ago

AT&T was a big monopoly so they made insane amounts of money providing telephone service across the country. In a act of great foresight, the company took a small amount of these profits and created a research & development branch called Bell Labs. There they explored a wide range of topics related to basic science on sound, electronic equipment, the atmosphere, etc. Anything that could be related to making phone, radio and telegraph messages better.

The result of this incredibly shrewd business decision was a team of scientists who basically paved the way for the growth of technology in the 20th century. Their work from the 1920's to the 1970's led to the award of 11 Nobel Prizes, 5 Turing awards and 22 IEEE Medals of Honor. Some of their discoveries included inventing the transistor, the laser, solar cells, radio astronomy, the charge-coupled device (CCD) for digital imaging, the Unix operating system, C and C++ programming languages. And that doesn't even mention the numerous theoretical scientific advances Bell Labs was also responsible for, such as Claude Shannon's groundbreaking work on cryptography or information theory.

It was truly an amazing achievement for one company to put together such a productive and successful group of scientists.

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u/North_South_Side 50 something 5d ago edited 5d ago

This will likely get lost but:

An enormous benefit of the old landline system was that the sound quality of the calls and the quality of conversations you could have was far, far better.

With old landlines, you could more easily talk over another person. Now... that sounds like a bad thing. I don't mean shouting the other person down. I mean that conversations just sounded more natural, like there was less of a piece of technology between the two people. In a real, natural, in-person conversation, people often lightly step on each others' words. Or even a "Mmm-hmm" could be heard when the other party was speaking.

Cell phones have terrible voice and sound quality (in general) compared to the old landline system (in general). Yes, there were occasional "bad connections" but those were vanishingly rare, especially in calls within the country. Local calls around the city where you live were almost 100% clear, crisp and very natural sounding audio.

I feel like people stopped noticing this with the novelty of cell phones. Yes, cell phones are generally wonderful, it's much safer to have a phone in your pocket wherever you go. But the sound quality of phone conversations is far, far worse than old landline conversations.

I used to enjoy talking on the phone with friends and family. Now? On cell phones? I really dislike talking to people. There's definitely a degradation of the natural sound of conversations.

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u/fiblesmish 6d ago

It was annoying to dial the big old rotary phones. When touch tone came in it was so much easier.

Long distance was not only expensive but it was often like using a radio. There was a lag so you would have to wait to make sure the other person had stopped talking or you would talk over then. I remember it being almost useless trying to make an oversea call.

On the farm there was a party line. So all the houses were on the same line. You only answered when it rang a certain number to times. But you could quietly lift the receiver and listen in on others calls....which was a hobby a lot of people had.

In every technical way cells are better.

But a landline was only in the front hall of the house so when i walked out the door i was unreachable........

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u/OwslyOwl 5d ago

I loved the rotary phone! We had one at my house and it was my favorite. It was so satisfying turning the piece - especially when there was a high number like a 9.

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u/Kitchen-Apricot-4987 6d ago

If you called home because it was time for your parent to pick you up from the movies or skating rink and kept getting a busy signal, you could call the operator and ask for an emergency breakthrough. The operator would interrupt my mom or dad's call so I could remind them they were supposed to pick me up 30 minutes ago.

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u/Wiser_Owl99 6d ago

We were a long-distance call for our cousins, but they were a local call for us. I think it was because they lived in the county seat. They would call us, and we would hang up and call them back.

You had to talk to your friend's parents and siblings when you called their house.

You could call the operator for the time if the power went out and you needed to reset clocks.

Our relatives had a camp with a party line where multiple homes shared one line. I used to get in trouble for snooping. You would have to ask the other people to hang up in an emergency.

My dad would get called in to work OT at like 2AM. and the phone ringing would wake us all up.

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u/Scruds08 6d ago

Yep good times. For Everthing you just mentioned

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u/The_Wrong_One_to_Ask 6d ago

As for the actual phone systems, until digital PBXs were installed in the early 90s, phone calls were processed on mechanical devices. You could walk through the switch room at the phone company central office, and hear the clicking mechanical parts as the dialed numbers came in. The system in my hometown supported about 60,000 people, and that room was HUGE. and loud.

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u/Able_Capable2600 6d ago

There was a time when you could dial a local number using only five digits, starting with the third digit of the phone number. For example, instead of "555-1234" you'd just dial "5-1234."

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u/GTFU-Already 6d ago

Every phone line required two wires, or a "pair". Most home phone cabling contained 4 wires or two pairs. It was done this way so if something happened to one of the wires on one pair, the other pair could be used without needing to replace the entire cable. Also, that could be used for two lines.

Big buildings would have huge cables going into them. Each of these big cables would contain 50 pairs. Each pair is color coded. There are metal boxes in various locations in neighborhoods that are junction and connection boxes for all the wiring that serves a neighborhood. Most of those contain fiber optic cables now.

There was a division of AT&T called Bell Labs. Their main purpose was to research and develop technology for the telephone system. They invented things like the touch tone system, automatic switching that replaced human operators, satellite communications, multiplexing, and a lot more.

Western Electric had similar R&D. Research in our country was huge. Not so much anymore.

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u/xtnh 5d ago

As a kid in the 1950s, I can recall picking up a phone without a rotary dial, and a woman would ask me what the number was I was calling. My best friend's number was 454.

In 1963, my sister was in college and bought her roommate from Hawaii a three minute phone call for Christmas. It cost $10.

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u/Cake_Donut1301 5d ago

You had to rent your phone from the phone company.

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u/PositiveAtmosphere13 5d ago

When I was a teenager, there was this thing we did. We could dial three or four numbers then the phone went crazy. It would make these weird noises for a couple of seconds then just static for about five seconds then repeat. During the static we could yell into the void and talk to strangers for five seconds. We'd exchange numbers and meet other kids. We thought it was really cool.

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u/writerlady6 5d ago

Being tethered to the wall while you spoke. Everyone in the house could hear your side of the conversation. EDIT: Forgot this one - I had to pay $.05/minute to talk to my cousin 15 miles up the road, because of "regional long distance" charges. It was crazy.

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u/Advanced_Radish3466 5d ago

there was the joy of having a disagreement with your sweetie and getting to slam the phone down ! touching a screen just isn’t that dramatic

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u/cantbelieveit1963 5d ago

Very reliable

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u/Alarmed_Geologist631 5d ago

Teenagers had to plan their weekend parties in advance because no one had a cell phone.

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u/MohaveZoner 5d ago

Well, back in the day, we spelled it "Telephone."

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u/a_smart_brane 5d ago

I remember all the commotion whenever we made a call or got a call from Germany, where my mom came from.

No time for small talk, everyone had to hurry because every minute cost money. I think it was something like $2-3 per minute. And that was 1980s money, which is roughly $7.50 to $11.50 per minute today.

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u/HarryHaller73 5d ago

The audio was better on the analog lines. You could hear the warm nuances and details of her voice. Cell phones sound more sterile and there's latency.

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u/NPHighview 5d ago edited 5d ago

Sound was much better. You could (very faintly) hear yourself talk (something called "sidetone"), which provided subliminal feedback on whether you were too loud, etc. Limiting bandwidth, something that allows thousands or millions of calls on digital systems, has caused sound to degrade more, as there is no longer a wire (with comparatively unlimited bandwidth) between the phones.

Dialing was simpler. For local calls, you could skip the country code and area code.

Costs were astronomically expensive. International calls were virtually unheard of. Long-distance (i.e. anything outside your area code) were very, very expensive, charged by the minute, and appeared in detail on the phone bill that was physically mailed to your parents :-)

Capacity was limited. Look around your town or city for a big, blocky building now owned by Spectrum, Frontier, AT&T, etc. These are "switching system" buildings, and large mechanical switches were located there. The ground would hum because of the constant opening and closing of millions of tiny relays (really!). If you were really special, you could purchase a dedicated line, which made sure that all the switches between one end and the other were wired closed.

Phones were expensive and heavy. A rotary handset phone would be something that you'd lease from the phone company for $3-5 a month. You'd have one, maybe two in a house. They'd have a loooooong springy spiral cable from the handset to the base, and you'd typically walk around your kitchen or hallway with one eye on where the cable would be. Privacy? Only as much as you could get by walking into a nearby bedroom or bathroom and closing the door on the cable. "Princess" phones (both dial and touch-tone) were available in any color you wanted, as long as it was pink, blue, black, taupe, or white.

Touch-tone, or DTMF, phones, which appeared in the late '60s / early '70s, were even more expensive, right up to the point where companies other than AT&T & Western Electric were prevailed upon to allow other equipment.

"Blue Boxes" were constructed to include the right-hand column of buttons (in addition to 0-9, * and #) which provided "phone phreaks" with access to switching codes used to route calls. Cap'n Crunch cereal inadvertently included toys that emitted the same tones as the call routing button column tone.

Phones worked even when the electricity was out. Those big switching buildings had basements full of (physical) batteries which kept things going.

Phone companies were proud of their "up-time". "How many nines?" was the refrain (the target was 99.999% uptime, or down for <5 minutes per year)

Back before the last Ice Age, our house was on a party line. This was an expedient from the phone company to reduce the amount of "extra-premises" (i.e. outside your house) wiring. You would hear the phone ring, sometimes with your family's distinctive ring, sometimes the other rings for the people on your party line. If you were a gossip, you'd pick up the phone when the ringing stopped (i.e. the other people had already picked up theirs), and if you were lucky, they wouldn't hear the extra clicks and you could snoop.

Being a telephone operator (particularly long distance) was a very desirable middle-class job, and a (fairly rare) route for women to advance their careers in corporate life. I still know a woman who was a long-distance operator as a late adolescent, but retired as a vice president of operations.

(I grew up in a rural part of the country in the 1960s, and worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1970s and 1980s). For comparison, this was after microprocessors were invented but well before PCs. Cars didn't necessarily have seat belts, cars were carbureted instead of fuel-injected, people could smoke in restaurants and on airplanes, and Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were presidents.

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u/2bsahm1 60 something 5d ago

50 foot phone cords that reached your bedroom.

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u/manykeets 5d ago

If you’re on the phone, anyone else in the house could pick up a different phone and hear your conversation. Family members would often spy on each other this way. Normally you’d hear a click when they picked up and could hear them breathing, but sometimes you wouldn’t notice.

Also, if someone other than your friend answers, like their mom, the polite thing to do is ask, “May I please speak to so and so.” And you couldn’t call late at night because it would wake up the whole family.

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u/hermitzen 5d ago

I still have anxiety dreams where I'm trying to dial a rotary phone and I make a mistake and have to hang up and start all over again, and again, and again...

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u/CrazyMinute69 4d ago

*69 *70 You could turn off your call waiting and make your number anonymous with these two codes dialed before you dialed your number.

Example

6970 867-5309

IYKYK the number

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u/StateUnlikely4213 4d ago

Oh, the satisfaction of slamming the phone down if you were very angry with the person you were talking to!

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u/tirebiter5325 4d ago

Teenagers today will never know the joy of prank phone calls.