Did anyone ever _(old tech)_?
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Gori the Grey
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I do. Fondly.
I remember my mother sending telegrams to communicate with local (in Baltimore in the 50s) hired people whom I guess, didn’t have a telephone. Singing telegrams for birthdays was still “an event”.
Klaus Hergersheimer
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Saw a movie once where a guy used a payphone to dial his home number, then used some sort of whistle and blew into the phone, which played back his answering machine messages left at home.
Can anyone confirm if this whistle was a thing? It wasn't a sci-fi movie.
Can anyone confirm if this whistle was a thing? It wasn't a sci-fi movie.
Broken_Erika
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Gori the Grey
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I never used one of those long-distance dialing services, although I remember the 10-10-220-then-1-then-the-number jingles. But here in the United States, we still had rotary phones into the 2010s. At least at my grandparents' house. Remarkably it remained compatible with the copper-based phone system for all that time. So I do know how to operate a rotary phone.
Telegrams, though, I can't remember. Singing telegrams - is that when the person delivering it sings the message?
Telegrams, though, I can't remember. Singing telegrams - is that when the person delivering it sings the message?
amadeus
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As part of the breakup of AT&T in 1984, they stopped leasing telephones—you had until 1987 to accept a buyout plan. However, some people (half a million as of 20 years ago) continued on the leasing system which has long since been spun off to a third party company.
One of the advantages under the lease, as opposed to purchasing your own, was that AT&T was responsible for all repairs, and you could also get cords from them. Of course, the value dropped far below the price of the service as time went on now that the price of a new telephone is less than a year’s worth of payments.
Gori the Grey
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I don't know if this counts as "old tech," but I once bought a device that looked exactly like a cassette tape, but with a cord on it with an A/V jack. That allowed one to plug it into a smartphone (back when I had one of those) and the device converted the smartphone signal into something the cassette player could read. I had an old car with a cassette player, and this let me play music on it.
Broken_Erika
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Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Anyone had one of these?
I probably didn't, although they were around. I did eventually buy a discman and listened to music there (eg lying in my bed, with headphones).
It was also useful to me in London, and you could even load a computer game cd to it and it'd play the OST.
It was also useful to me in London, and you could even load a computer game cd to it and it'd play the OST.
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The phone my grandparents had dated from the mid-to-late 1960s and was still in service until the mid-2010s.
I had a hard time finding anything about that "1987 buyout plan" on the Internet, but this Vindicator article from 2004 said:
I don't know whether my grandparents bought their old set, continued to lease, or were in a part of the country that wasn't part of Ma Bell and thus had owned from the start. But it is kind of wild to think that phones used to be leased, without even an option to own it. Thinking about my car, I would have spent so much more on it by now if I'd had to lease it indefinitely versus buying it, even if the lease rates were what is currently offered for cars, and not an amount that would pay for the item's whole cost within twelve months.
amadeus
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I think the mentality at the time was that the telephone monopoly was more like a public utility, so owning the phone was somewhat like owning the power lines or electric meters that went into your house or the water pipes connected underneath.
Also, the telephone was often hard-wired in before the introduction of the telephone jacks that we are familiar with, which I believe came about in the 1970’s, so swapping out one for another would have been a pretty laborious process then.
“They don’t build them like they used to.” — and thank goodness!
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Interesting, I can kind of see the logic of it. Just like Internet almost has utility status now from a utility standpoint.
But water is almost always municipally owned and run and priced inexpensively (well, maybe not out in the desert, I'm in an area with plentiful fresh water), and electricity rates tend to be regulated to prevent price-gouging, even if my "municipally supplied electricity" status is not so common. AT&T was a privately owned for-profit corporation that was very good at the "for profit" part.
But water is almost always municipally owned and run and priced inexpensively (well, maybe not out in the desert, I'm in an area with plentiful fresh water), and electricity rates tend to be regulated to prevent price-gouging, even if my "municipally supplied electricity" status is not so common. AT&T was a privately owned for-profit corporation that was very good at the "for profit" part.
amadeus
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As a legal monopoly though they were required to perform some service to the public such as universal service, and the Bell System did a lot of beneficial research—the most important perhaps being the transistor.
And the costs of maintaining the system were not inconsiderable—millions of mechanical switches were employed to direct telephone calls, which allowed for the direct dialing rather than having to go through the operator.
The breakup of AT&T wasn’t as antagonistic as say other antitrust actions, it was partly a business decision because AT&T wanted to enter the computer market—they saw the value of all of the work (especially considering what was to become the internet—great foresight but horrible execution on post-breakup AT&T) and wanted to get in on it, even if it meant losing their privileged status.
And the costs of maintaining the system were not inconsiderable—millions of mechanical switches were employed to direct telephone calls, which allowed for the direct dialing rather than having to go through the operator.
The breakup of AT&T wasn’t as antagonistic as say other antitrust actions, it was partly a business decision because AT&T wanted to enter the computer market—they saw the value of all of the work (especially considering what was to become the internet—great foresight but horrible execution on post-breakup AT&T) and wanted to get in on it, even if it meant losing their privileged status.
Plains-Cow
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