Chap builds rotary dial mobile phone If you miss the whirr-and-thunk of a rotary dial, you could download an app that imitates the rotary dialler, or you could make your own mobile with a rotary dial. For those that prefer something a little more physical, this Hackaday project should keep you busy with the soldering iron: a real rotary dialler (with appropriate …
Product has been retired, but I want one (and probably someone else is selling them somewhere): https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/287
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Without a "telephone dial" how do you expect the data-entry operators to get their work done?
http://engineering-intelligence.net/images/bob-800x647.jpeg
http://historycompu.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/first-computers-pascals-calculator.html
I remember seeing my Granddad in the hallway dialling out on the phone, he was visibly fearful of dialling a wrong number (think of the shame and embarrassment). I remember rotary dials and being given some coppers for the telephone box by the parade of shops so we could practice calling home from a red telephone box. The heavy phone books held on fold up arms, (or was that later..) a slight smell of pee (not mine) the heft of the handset, pressing buttons on connection, the bell hit by the coins still exist in that strange memory.
Who else remembers a time when having access to a phone box was considered a good and important thing, how the layout was before it was all locked down due to the vandalism?
Why the hell is our current life and public space so locked down and limited by the few idiots that want to wreck stuff? Oh that's it I'm off to buy some beige slacks.
... the first ISP server in the country had a number quite like 0900-#000#000# That's ten digits after the 0900, most of them zeroes. The only other services that used that 0900 service back then were phone-sex, charging a few $currency PER MINUTE. The ISP was no different, it would charge the same amount, and you would feel screwed, likewise. Oh the irony that today we have free porn on the webs.
We were ecstatic when the bloody modem started dialing...dialing...dialing...busy. Hang-up. start over. dial...dial...dial... on a bloody pulse line. And you could see the AT commands on the modem interface, while negotiating host with the server. The login was straight in there, in the AT interface too, no dial-up authentication in Windows 3.x yet invented. God forbid if you miss-typed login or password, since the backspace on your keyboard meant something entirely different on the terminal.
I wonder if anybody had to dial that by hand, on a standard rotating dial, like the one in article.
without the bloody rotating dialer. Just hit the hangup hook as fast and in the same time spacing as the rotating dialer does. A mechanical switch that acts fast enough can emulate that too.
Those locked-down phones with actual locks never prevented dialing once I found that out. Like the one below:
http://www.ioffer.com/img3/item/533/375/304/rotary-phone-dial-lock-new-in-package-old-stock-054c.jpg
Maxwell Smart had one of these on his right foot back in the 1960s.
In 1991, I was working as a messenger. Whenever I made a dropoff I needed to call in to the dispatcher in hopes there would be another job nearby. This one job took me to the HQ of the Los Angeles Unified School District, near downtown LA. The place felt very anachronistic. All of the furniture was ancient and each desk had a rotary phone. When I went to call in to the dispatcher I found I couldn't immediately remember how to use the kind of phone I'd grown up with. I had to stare at it for about 30 seconds before it finally came to me.
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