Muro deGrizecoStick a coin in one of these, and punch buttons with a number we'd memorized.
Ooh, or maybe punch in a calling card number, to charge the call to that.
Infrogmation@murodegrizeco
Maybe we had the telephone number memorized, maybe we had it written down on a piece of paper. Maybe we carried around a little booklet with the names and numbers we called regularly.
And if one needed a number you didn't know and didn't have in your little booklet, that's what the big book hanging down from the pay phone was for.
Adoxograph@Infrogmation @murodegrizeco and we had to call through the list to see where everyone was if we were trying to meet up with multiple people. This took a long time particularly on a rotary phone. #ThingsWeUsedToDoButDontDoNow
An early intern job I had was testing cordless phone ASICs. The test program hadn't been ported to the right wafer test machine, so as an intern, I made hundreds of calls in a lab, between a couple of phone prototype units, marking the device packages as I worked. Fun.
Anyway.
There was an engineer there who once demo'd a old working phone switch relay, using a 1940's rotary phone. He dialed a 3, and the switch stepped "click-click-click".
History!
During summers growing up, my parents took us to a lake. We stayed in a state park lodge. Maybe I was 12?
There was a utility room with a electromechanical PBX, that I somehow got into. #Lockpicks might have been involved. I didn't touch anything.
I just stood in front of the equipment rack, listening happily to the occasional click-click-click of #telephone calls being placed, the relays chattering.
