My grandma still doesn't have dial service.. I just showed this video to my 92 year old grandma and she was in "awe" at this video. When I asked her if she ever attended anything like this, she snapped back with, "They had dial service since then?!". Turns out, grandma didn't receive "dial service" until the late 1970s! This was due to the very rural (and very conservative) community grams grew up and lived in. I always wondered why none of her phones had dials on them; I just assumed they were for decoration only. All this talk got me curious about her phone and I took a better look at it this time. Grandma had already went to bed, so I able to touch her phone without any death glaring concerns. Sure enough, dial tone. But it almost sounded this buzz rather than a normal dial tone, and not like the tone in this movie but a rattling buzz (ill record it and post a link to my video). Anyways, moments after picking up, there's a loud clap click clunk noise and someone answers! "HELLO?!" I heard the faint voice of a female coming through (it almost felt like someone yelling a conversation down a long hollow pipe). After a lengthy 15-20 conversation with, what was, the local phone operator about the phone situation in this town. It turns out, once the local phone company sold out to Wisconsin Bell the town pooled their money together, formed a cooperative to buy it instead. Still today, coming towards the end of 2015, a phone company in norther Wisconsin still doesnt use dial service.
When they're talkiing about party lines (at 6:10 to 6:35), I love how old Grandpa turns around and glares at the old biddy behind him in the ugly hat and sneers at her, and she gives him the evil eye right back ! Priceless!!
I have not, but thanks for bringing me back to this video. It made me start thinking. Dialing a phone is trivial, yet the existence of this video underscores a deeper issue in modern society: the huge technological gap. There is a small group of highly intelligent people who understand how each technology works, contrasted by a mass of people use but it do not understand it. The gap is growing and this video represents a precursor to the present era of technological indulgence & disconnection.
Grandpa was totally hesitant about dialing his first phone number on the telephone. However, after facing his fear and reaching the party he wanted, he was overwhelmed with happiness. He then trudged off to his bedroom, crawled into bed, slipped under the covers and enjoyed himself over a task well done.
This was the first "dial" system used. It was called a "Step by Step" Office,and was very archaic...later years,You could get "Rotary" service,and/or "Touch Tone Phones. They were more,and the equipment had to br changed to "accept the "Tones". Touch Tone was more expensive,too...$1.50 a month here in Pa. And phone styles were more,and so was colored phones. It was a whole different world. My God,when I look back,and it seems like Yesterday.
Right before Gramps gets up to make his first phone call on the new fangled device, he looks like he's either going to wet his pants or commit a murder.
You mean the letters were added as an aid to memory. In the 1960's the company just started using the corresponding numbers, instead of the prefix names.
The Demonstrator Woman must have been a ball of fun on her wedding night. "The husband will now pick up the manual and refer to the diagram on page 1. Proceed with steps A, B, C & D making sure the wife is purring before you proceed. to step E, etc etc etc". Oh My........
My grandma tells me stories about back when she was young, they had the 'party line' phone service, and instead of numbers, people had seperate ring tones. Example; her ring tone was 'one long, two short' [the phone would go "riiiiing... ring ring", and that's how you know the phone was for you. haha she she and her brother used to listen to other people's conversations, and they'd get belted if they were caught lol... man, I was born in '85, but i wish i could experience those days first hand.
This is actually pretty informative to show us modern people, who have cell phones in our ears now, how it was in the "good old days". I'm glad they changed the dial tone.
I don't. ;) I use a rotary phone, and when I was about 5 years old in the 90's, I saw my first rotary and figured it out fairly quick. Western Electric 500 here. ;)
I've been watching these old instructional videos and even though I knew this already, I still marvel that we were still getting dial telephones installed AFTER TV's had become rather commonplace in average peoples' homes. Crazy.
Most dial tones and busy signals sounded like this until the 60s. Some lasted until the 80s. They were generated by the "tone plant" in the CO by rotating electromechanical oscillators. When Touch-tone (tm) was rolled out in the 60s, switches were retrofitted with electronic oscillators so as to not interfere with the DTMF receivers. Those oscillators were similar to what in the 70s became called "ESS Dial tone." Today, all the major switches generate the same generic sounding ESS tones.
I'm guessing late 30's if that's an early installation of Crossbar 1. The dial tone, ringing & busy signals were generated by a buzzer (or a vibrator relay).
We still use the 4 digit phone number, the phone company just added a prefix and then an area code to it as things grew. But back in the 20's they had a 4 digit # and if you needed to call out of your prefix, you'd call the operator.
Remember an episode of Lost in Space when Will was transported back to Earth in 1997.The Vermont town he was in looked like a small town in 1951. Phones with no dails so you had to tell the operator the number.Where were the cell phones if it was 1997?How is it if you can send a family to Alpha Centauri at light speed of faster and still have a town that was behind the times as Will said?
I remember that episode. Funny thing is, I recall being in Vermont around 1983 and using a phone booth that had no dial. I had to pick up and wait for an operator. Not 1997, granted, but definitely still pretty behind the times for '83.
Way, way back smaller towns had shorter phone numbers, depending on the total number of users. Really small towns had 4-digit phone numbers, or sometimes 3-digit phone numbers.
The Bell System was the phone company for many people. Back then the phone company manufactured and owned the telphones too. Customers did not own phones, they just rented by the month.
Transatlantic accent. This was a contrived accent taught in snooty prep schools and in Hollywood. It was supposed to sound aristocratic. Think Franklin Roosevelt or Katherine Hepburn.
I've heard similar stories from my relatives. The exchange was only 4 numbers and then as the number of people who used telephones increased, the added the first 3 numbers and then area codes for direct-dial long distance. Now with cell phones, faxes, Internet-only lines, etc. The phone companies keep running out of numbers. We've come a long way in a short time.
@commonman80 Either that or the concept of "personal manufacturing" will come in use. That means everyone has a 3D printer that can assemble or "print" complete machines, decorative objects, or just about anything else simply by purchasing the plans from the internet and downloading them into the printer. That would even include the printer making replacement parts for itself, or to fully reproduce without the need of a production plant. The only remaining companies produce raws.
Oh, the hats! The hair! The remnant of the northeastern US women's private college last-of-the-British accent (Katherine Hepburn style). "Don't try to hurry it back." "Eh? Yeah! That's the right noise."
Way to go Grandpa! Are they still giving these classes? I need a refresher. But that dial tone sounds kind of scary. Like someone being electrocuted on the other end.
Not quite so "way, way back". The town I go to up north in the summer had permissive 4-digit dialing until 2000. The town was small enough that it did not need all 10,000 numbers it its 906-341 exchange. 4-digit numbers with the first three digits matching the exchange of a nearby town (e.g. 283*) were not assigned, and other exchanges in the area code did not conflict, since you needed the 1-906 anyway. Today, one needs to dial the 341.
When this movie was made and shown, a lot of people in the USA in cities already had dial phones and knew very well how to use them. Only smaller towns and urban areas wouldn't have switched to newer equipment yet, and people there wouldn't have known how to use this newfangled dial thing. It really doesn't seem as though this simple device would have required nearly 10 minutes of explanation, but apparently it did.
Dial phones were pretty cool, but when the Touch Tones came out, that was really fun. I sure liked pushing the buttons when I wanted to make a call, and I still do to this day
@JoaoPessoa86 - I can believe how thin those phone books are. To this day, the Hershey, Pennsylvania phone books are less than 3/4" (2 cm) thick, including both Yellow Pages and white pages. Their covers are chocolate brown and have the Hershey bar logo on them, with the saying, "The Sweetest Place On Earth". Nearby, the Lebanon, Pennsylvania phone book isn't much bigger, but its cover is the standard yellow. Suburban Philadelphia phone books are at least 2" (5 cm) thick if not thicker.
It's interesting, a lot of the early films from the 1930s have dial phones as well as dial-less models.Western Electric along with Automatic Electric and such had dial models earlier than the 50s. But, it wasn't till the 50s the dial tone came about. That's what the big deal in this film was, the dial tone... A step in eliminating the need to be greeted by an operator. To dial your own calls. The phone company started to go from providing a service to a dis-service. :/
probably didn’t make it to answering machines, caller ID, ten number dialing, voicemail, cell phones, or smart phones, but imagine if he had had to go through all of that with as much agita as having to dial caused.
Mid '30s b/c gramps' phone didn't have bells- phones with bells inside came out in 1937. Push button phones predate rotary, but you could only have 10 lines on a system, 0-9. They didn't know how to store additional numbers- the rotary system used rotors that turned as you dialed and held them until you reached the last one. I had a friend (1980s) whose phone was on a rotor system- there was an echo for each # and it didn't matter how fast you dialed, the system would dial at its own pace.
you have to imagine that they didn't had any dials before...back then wasn't everybody equiped with a telephone...and that was totaly new like the internet in the late 80's
It's kind of fun to compare this film to the anime Summer Wars, where the "old fashioned" grandma pulls everybody together by reaching out and actually making phone calls to them.
this film is really ancient...I am 54 years old and "never" remember a dial tone like that. Based on her cloths, hair style etc I am going to guess this is about 1949
I am 48 and love the past. I was re-incarnated from the 1930-40s...love those eras...
I'm glad they went to a softer tone. That old one sounded like a fire alarm.
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
My grandma still doesn't have dial service..
I just showed this video to my 92 year old grandma and she was in "awe" at this video. When I asked her if she ever attended anything like this, she snapped back with, "They had dial service since then?!". Turns out, grandma didn't receive "dial service" until the late 1970s! This was due to the very rural (and very conservative) community grams grew up and lived in. I always wondered why none of her phones had dials on them; I just assumed they were for decoration only. All this talk got me curious about her phone and I took a better look at it this time. Grandma had already went to bed, so I able to touch her phone without any death glaring concerns. Sure enough, dial tone. But it almost sounded this buzz rather than a normal dial tone, and not like the tone in this movie but a rattling buzz (ill record it and post a link to my video). Anyways, moments after picking up, there's a loud clap click clunk noise and someone answers! "HELLO?!"
I heard the faint voice of a female coming through (it almost felt like someone yelling a conversation down a long hollow pipe). After a lengthy 15-20 conversation with, what was, the local phone operator about the phone situation in this town. It turns out, once the local phone company sold out to Wisconsin Bell the town pooled their money together, formed a cooperative to buy it instead. Still today, coming towards the end of 2015, a phone company in norther Wisconsin still doesnt use dial service.
That is goddamn fascinating. Omg I want to know more about this crazy town stuck in time!
William Mary Hey where's the video you said you will post?
I hope they have cell service in that town! Who still uses a landline phone anyway?
I think Virginia City, NV and Catalina Island were some of the last areas to get dial service.
If they have cell service maybe some one out there would like this little thingy I found on ebay searching ' western electric bluetooth '
When they're talkiing about party lines (at 6:10 to 6:35), I love how old Grandpa turns around and glares at the old biddy behind him in the ugly hat and sneers at her, and she gives him the evil eye right back ! Priceless!!
They were made for each other. A passive aggressive old fart and a shrewd old battle-axe! LOL!
The dial tone sounds like electrocution.
I love the sound of this dial tone. LOL
Still exists in some rural areas of Canada.
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
They actually did sound like that at least into the late 60's at least in my hometown
I have not, but thanks for bringing me back to this video. It made me start thinking. Dialing a phone is trivial, yet the existence of this video underscores a deeper issue in modern society: the huge technological gap. There is a small group of highly intelligent people who understand how each technology works, contrasted by a mass of people use but it do not understand it. The gap is growing and this video represents a precursor to the present era of technological indulgence & disconnection.
Cool, I love old films like this
I loved how she help up the phone calmly with a smile as it blared out a hideous electrical buzz. This is the sound of your new master. Welcome it.
I like that they play the heroic music as Gramps goes to make a phone call.
I can't get over how thin those phone books are
Look at some of them now. They're almost the same size.
Grandpa was totally hesitant about dialing his first phone number on the telephone. However, after facing his fear and reaching the party he wanted, he was overwhelmed with happiness. He then trudged off to his bedroom, crawled into bed, slipped under the covers and enjoyed himself over a task well done.
Oh man...I needed a good laugh and that was it! Thanks! :)
This was the first "dial" system used. It was called a "Step by Step" Office,and was very archaic...later years,You could get "Rotary" service,and/or "Touch Tone Phones. They were more,and the equipment had to br changed to "accept the "Tones". Touch Tone was more expensive,too...$1.50 a month here in Pa. And phone styles were more,and so was colored phones. It was a whole different world. My God,when I look back,and it seems like Yesterday.
Yay! Grandpa made a call!
Right before Gramps gets up to make his first phone call on the new fangled device, he looks like he's either going to wet his pants or commit a murder.
You mean the letters were added as an aid to memory. In the 1960's the company just started using the corresponding numbers, instead of the prefix names.
The Demonstrator Woman must have been a ball of fun on her wedding night.
"The husband will now pick up the manual and refer to the diagram on page 1. Proceed with steps A, B, C & D making sure the wife is purring before you proceed. to step E, etc etc etc".
Oh My........
You never know she might have been a ball of 🔥.
Now they just throw a $1,000 cell phone at you and tell you to figure it out yourself
I'd feel pretty disappointed every time I dialed a number. Sounds like an "incorrect answer" tone you'd hear on a gameshow.
the dial tone sounds like Gilbert Gottfried
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
My grandma tells me stories about back when she was young, they had the 'party line' phone service, and instead of numbers, people had seperate ring tones. Example; her ring tone was 'one long, two short' [the phone would go "riiiiing... ring ring", and that's how you know the phone was for you. haha she she and her brother used to listen to other people's conversations, and they'd get belted if they were caught lol...
man, I was born in '85, but i wish i could experience those days first hand.
What a wicked sounding dial tone. Did it cause brain damage?
Oh, love the hats, ladies!
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
That dial tone sounds like someone electrocuting a cat.
that IS how they got dialtone back in the old days SILLY! ;0
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
She kinda looks like Miss Togar in "Rock 'n' Roll High School."
That would be Mary Woronov.
Hahahahah!!! Listen to that LOL dial tone!
That dialtone doesn’t actually sound like that they were just using a buzzer to simulate the dialtone
Lucky they didn't have smartphones back then, would take her forever to explain how to use it :D
This is actually pretty informative to show us modern people, who have cell phones in our ears now, how it was in the "good old days". I'm glad they changed the dial tone.
It's the dial tone that's making Grandpa cranky.
I don't. ;) I use a rotary phone, and when I was about 5 years old in the 90's, I saw my first rotary and figured it out fairly quick.
Western Electric 500 here. ;)
I've been watching these old instructional videos and even though I knew this already, I still marvel that we were still getting dial telephones installed AFTER TV's had become rather commonplace in average peoples' homes. Crazy.
I remember using them as a kid (alongside modern home phones, of course), and I'm not even 30.
Most dial tones and busy signals sounded like this until the 60s. Some lasted until the 80s. They were generated by the "tone plant" in the CO by rotating electromechanical oscillators.
When Touch-tone (tm) was rolled out in the 60s, switches were retrofitted with electronic oscillators so as to not interfere with the DTMF receivers. Those oscillators were similar to what in the 70s became called "ESS Dial tone."
Today, all the major switches generate the same generic sounding ESS tones.
Almost every town, it seemed, had a different sounding dial tone, busy line, ring sound, etc. even back in the 70's.
Miss White: "You can give her flowers, you can give her candy, but don't forget to give her a ringy-dingy!"
She really cozies up to the big dial.
I'm guessing late 30's if that's an early installation of Crossbar 1. The dial tone, ringing & busy signals were generated by a buzzer (or a vibrator relay).
Her former job was German prison camp guard.
I miss phone phreaks.
OMG that dial tone sounds like a mind altering signal!!!! LOL hahahhaha
I'll wait for the ESS5 or the DMS 200 thanks !
We still use the 4 digit phone number, the phone company just added a prefix and then an area code to it as things grew. But back in the 20's they had a 4 digit # and if you needed to call out of your prefix, you'd call the operator.
Always remember. Its a particular signal !! lol
Things are easier to use now. He seemed pretty smart - he knew a way to enhance call security!
If I was gramps I would hang up and make Ed call me back just to see if it worked.
Remember an episode of Lost in Space when Will was transported back to Earth in 1997.The Vermont town he was in looked like a small town in 1951. Phones with no dails so you had to tell the operator the number.Where were the cell phones if it was 1997?How is it if you can send a family to Alpha Centauri at light speed of faster and still have a town that was behind the times as Will said?
I remember that episode. Funny thing is, I recall being in Vermont around 1983 and using a phone booth that had no dial. I had to pick up and wait for an operator. Not 1997, granted, but definitely still pretty behind the times for '83.
The dial tone and the ring sound more like electrical shorts. :)
Way, way back smaller towns had shorter phone numbers, depending on the total number of users. Really small towns had 4-digit phone numbers, or sometimes 3-digit phone numbers.
The Bell System was the phone company for many people. Back then the phone company manufactured and owned the telphones too. Customers did not own phones, they just rented by the month.
So, wow, you mean, when my parents saw this on RUclips, that's how they learned how to .... :-)
What do you call this accent? She enunciates so beautifully and leaves no room for error on her part. The clarity in her voice is just so charming.
Transatlantic accent. This was a contrived accent taught in snooty prep schools and in Hollywood. It was supposed to sound aristocratic. Think Franklin Roosevelt or Katherine Hepburn.
I've heard similar stories from my relatives. The exchange was only 4 numbers and then as the number of people who used telephones increased, the added the first 3 numbers and then area codes for direct-dial long distance. Now with cell phones, faxes, Internet-only lines, etc. The phone companies keep running out of numbers. We've come a long way in a short time.
Most young people would need to see this to be able to use a rotary dial telephone :-)
I never heard a dial tone like that. It's the signal you now hear on TV for the Emergency Alert System.
6:23 the look Grandpa gave Grandma, she sure was pissed!
Neighbors on a party line.
@@lowercherty MASHER!
Damn that dial tone is a torture device
@commonman80 Either that or the concept of "personal manufacturing" will come in use. That means everyone has a 3D printer that can assemble or "print" complete machines, decorative objects, or just about anything else simply by purchasing the plans from the internet and downloading them into the printer. That would even include the printer making replacement parts for itself, or to fully reproduce without the need of a production plant. The only remaining companies produce raws.
people spoke with too much diction back then, yet not enough now.
I can see the reason why, back then, they didn't have computers to produce smooth tones. So they had to use buzzing tones instead.
Oh, the hats! The hair! The remnant of the northeastern US women's private college last-of-the-British accent (Katherine Hepburn style).
"Don't try to hurry it back."
"Eh? Yeah! That's the right noise."
I can just hear the old southerners at my last church complaining.
"Are you going to pay me, now that you are making me do the work?"
Way to go Grandpa! Are they still giving these classes? I need a refresher. But that dial tone sounds kind of scary. Like someone being electrocuted on the other end.
Not quite so "way, way back".
The town I go to up north in the summer had permissive 4-digit dialing until 2000.
The town was small enough that it did not need all 10,000 numbers it its 906-341 exchange. 4-digit numbers with the first three digits matching the exchange of a nearby town (e.g. 283*) were not assigned, and other exchanges in the area code did not conflict, since you needed the 1-906 anyway.
Today, one needs to dial the 341.
When this movie was made and shown, a lot of people in the USA in cities already had dial phones and knew very well how to use them. Only smaller towns and urban areas wouldn't have switched to newer equipment yet, and people there wouldn't have known how to use this newfangled dial thing. It really doesn't seem as though this simple device would have required nearly 10 minutes of explanation, but apparently it did.
that dial tone sounds like its got a ground or high resistance open on it....
That woman hates every single person in the room.
That "clear, evenly spaced ring..." - how quaint to realize the at one point this was an unfamiliar sound.
Dial phones were pretty cool, but when the Touch Tones came out, that was really fun. I sure liked pushing the buttons when I wanted to make a call, and I still do to this day
Years ago, they used that amplified "Dial Tone" to alert the Firefighters at the station of a alarm. That is how they woke us up at night. haha
LOL!!! Good one!
@JoaoPessoa86 - I can believe how thin those phone books are. To this day, the Hershey, Pennsylvania phone books are less than 3/4" (2 cm) thick, including both Yellow Pages and white pages. Their covers are chocolate brown and have the Hershey bar logo on them, with the saying, "The Sweetest Place On Earth". Nearby, the Lebanon, Pennsylvania phone book isn't much bigger, but its cover is the standard yellow. Suburban Philadelphia phone books are at least 2" (5 cm) thick if not thicker.
I'm glad to finally find out how to do this
It's interesting, a lot of the early films from the 1930s have dial phones as well as dial-less models.Western Electric along with Automatic Electric and such had dial models earlier than the 50s. But, it wasn't till the 50s the dial tone came about. That's what the big deal in this film was, the dial tone... A step in eliminating the need to be greeted by an operator. To dial your own calls. The phone company started to go from providing a service to a dis-service. :/
I know someone in rural Virginia whose house was on a party line until 1989
And then he had to get used to 7-number dialing and touch tone :P
probably didn’t make it to answering machines, caller ID, ten number dialing, voicemail, cell phones, or smart phones, but imagine if he had had to go through all of that with as much agita as having to dial caused.
thanks for sharing these historic videos kids today wouldn't understand what we went through lol
Mid '30s b/c gramps' phone didn't have bells- phones with bells inside came out in 1937. Push button phones predate rotary, but you could only have 10 lines on a system, 0-9. They didn't know how to store additional numbers- the rotary system used rotors that turned as you dialed and held them until you reached the last one. I had a friend (1980s) whose phone was on a rotor system- there was an echo for each # and it didn't matter how fast you dialed, the system would dial at its own pace.
the old man is calling up the grand wizard. :/
It's
the alarm sound you hear now on TV for the Emergency Alert System!
He was no slouch with security measures!
Modern Wonders!!! Cranky Grandpa don't want that
Her other job is Dominatrix!
you have to imagine that they didn't had any dials before...back then wasn't everybody equiped with a telephone...and that was totaly new like the internet in the late 80's
those took so much energy and u could make secret codes like morse by tpping metal on the inside
That's quite a dial tone.
Why is that woman trying to have so much swagger? :)
After the family was fast asleep, Gramps sneaked into the living room and used the new dial phone to make obscene calls, as call tracing was unknown.
I saw quite a few classic rotary phones sold on ebay for $700. I kind of want to buy that big one in the video.
Yep. Watch the reruns of the Andy Griffith show sometime. "Sarah, get me Goober down at the filling station".
It's kind of fun to compare this film to the anime Summer Wars, where the "old fashioned" grandma pulls everybody together by reaching out and actually making phone calls to them.
She worked her way up as an operator.
We had party line cc crazy?!!!!!!!!!!😅😅😅😅
The dial tone sounds like the dryer buzzer. "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ"
this film is really ancient...I am 54 years old and "never" remember a dial tone like that. Based on her cloths, hair style etc I am going to guess this is about 1949
Now you can call the help line in India.
1 person didn't listen for the dial tone.
I love this video 😊
It's a pulse system. They could have, but, for example, to send 9, you'd have to push the button rapidly nine times.
Love the "that's you old biddy!" look Grandpa gives his neighbor at 6:15!
I'm not sure how that works. Could you explain it in more detail?
Golly, hot digiddy dog! Where can I get me one of these fancy do-dads!?
That dial tone sounded really bad with all that buzzing sound lol