Dan PortsNew phone. Looking forward to all the time I’ll save dialing by storing my contacts… on punch cards!
recursive 🏳️🌈@dan Oh, that's the coolest thing. But wait, it's a rotary dial phone, but the cards use the same matrix as DTMF to encode the number
@recursive whoa, I hadn’t thought of that!
Rob Ricci
Kacey@dan looks like you are explicitly selecting the two touch tones, which means you could also encode * and # if you wanted
Mans R@dan Interesting encoding. I wonder how the decoder works.
Steve Downey@dan
So although a rotary phone, looks like the cards may have generated DTMF tones, selecting the row and column frequency?
So although a rotary phone, looks like the cards may have generated DTMF tones, selecting the row and column frequency?
Austin Dern, Dean of Coatis@dan I'm oddly delighted that the punch card system uses an ingenious and self-explanatory scheme to cut the thing down from needing 11 holes per row to ... eight holes. I'm sure the advantage is significant on The Phone Company's scale but to the individual user it seems a little chintzy.
TerrorBite 🦁@Austin_Dern @dan As others have pointed out, if each hole here produced a unique tone, then you get touch-tone dialling (DMTF). This particular phone happens to be pulse dialling, but it's likely the punch system was designed for DMTF which was just coming into use at the time.
StarkRG@dan It's a ternary number system. A "digit" consists of three positions. Ignoring the "STOP" line, which only encodes control, and 0 which is encoded separately, the bottom three positions form the least significant digit while the top three are the most significant digit. The annoying thing, though, is that the most significant digit is offset by one. Dang.
Got this phone up and running, and it is every bit as satisfying as I had hoped to be able to dial using punch cards.
groxx@dan imagine the time savings too
🏳️🌈Superdave! 😘🍷👨🦯
GuyDudeman@dan That's rad. Where on earth were those used? And by whom?
@GuyDudeman Western Electric manufactured them in the 60s and 70s.
For the executive and the office worker, according to the advertisements! https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/document-repository/catalogs-manuals/western-electric-bell-system/marketing-documents-by-date/12708-bell-system-card-dialer-brochure-apr63/file
@dan That's so rad. I love it so much. It's fun that these old phones still work! I don't even have a landline at our house.
Garth Kidd@dan I was 100% expecting that to reach @pjf’s fine Internet product https://github.com/pjf/rickastley alas it seems it’s having some downtime but no worries it’s rude to demand unceasing effort for the occasional niche giggle of our choice
@garthk @pjf wow, you really can find everything online! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JPDjy4MijA
Rare western electric 10 button card dialer calling Rick Astley hotline
Ross of Ottawa@dan nice to see the tone-dialer version in action.
steev hise@dan
“Please insert card 2 for main menu. If you know your party’s extension you may insert that card at any time. Please listen to this entire message as our options may have changed…”
“Please insert card 2 for main menu. If you know your party’s extension you may insert that card at any time. Please listen to this entire message as our options may have changed…”
mivox is exhausted 
@dan @msbellows That is absolutely wonderful. 😆
Silversalty@dan
This reminded me of a vintage rolodex file that I still have. It would make a decent punch card business card data base dialer.
This reminded me of a vintage rolodex file that I still have. It would make a decent punch card business card data base dialer.
sabik@dan
The punch cards are coded as for DTMF, but the phone pulse-dials?
The punch cards are coded as for DTMF, but the phone pulse-dials?
@sabik yes! It was designed at roughly the same time as DTMF dialing, so maybe they were planning ahead?
Holger Krupp
Timo Hetzel
Luis Villa@dan me: skeuomorphism is bad
also me: unless society gives me a phone+contact app whose UX is directly inspired by this, I hope we are hit by an asteroid
Dan Wallach@dan Nice. Now I'm curious if my VOIP gateway understands rotary pulses rather than touch tones. Hmm.
@dwallach You can definitely find ones that do! (e.g., most of the Grandstream models)
Ed Davies
Matt Mullins
Gnomigut@dan @dwallach some systems do. It is tedious, though, because the system needs a really steady pulse. So you had to be really careful dialing in a steady, slow and monotonous way.
I did use my rotary phone together with a fritz Box up until about 2008, but then I gave up because it was really a hassle to dial longer numbers, with a lot of 9 or 0 in it.
kevin@dan What, you didn’t have cards for all of your CLOSEST contacts? Where were you back then? You apparently didn’t know the right people.
Cyber Yuki@dan The irony today: Instead of pressing a lot of numbers, you have to type the name of your contact and scroll.
There's no quick solution to this problem, you'll always end up using log(number of contacts) key presses.
Unless you have your contacts categorized, but that's advanced stuff.
Jeremy_N1ZZZ
Stuart Celarier ❌👑@dan Total blast from the past!
Ahimsa@dan Cool!
Found video on youtube showing two of these phones in action (rotary and touch tone)
Telephone Collectors International ( TCI ) Video : Western Electric card dialers
Anvil of Truth@dan Oh darn, I just threw away my Fredian Flex Writer with punch card attachment. I guess a person could cut rectangles with an exacto knife…
ᴡᴀʟᴋɪɴɢ ᴅʀᴀɢʟɪɴᴇ@LawrenceShop @dan a leatherworker’s hole punch might be less aggravating
Kara Danvers🇺🇦🇺🇸🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈@dan trying to call 911 gonna be fun oof not used one these in yeeeears
Alexander Janßen@dan
Ohhhhhhh shiny! Any information about the provenance?
Ohhhhhhh shiny! Any information about the provenance?
alternative_be✅🖖🏻@dan I’m old enough to remember punch cards, but I ‘ve never seen such a phone in my life. Cool!
Badri@dan ooh, this is cool! I didn't know such a thing existed (but I'm also not surprised) 😮
Stone@dan wow, never saw this before and I worked in telecom. thanks for sharing!
Mr. Bruno 
@dan No 2 inch video screen? Pass.
Medea Vanamonde🏳️⚧️ ♀
Alex Rosenberg@dan It won’t actually save you any time. Pulse dialing is a fixed speed. It just spares you the finger motions.
Brian Danger Hicks@dan That looks much more usable than the one that stores numbers on core rope
Russian phone dialler using interesting magnetic memory tech
Solarbird 
@dan This thing was a plot point in a Columbo episode!
8tpercent
Flittermouse 🔞🐩 
@dan
I see this seeming like a good idea if you can hand these out like business cards. But that would require a large number of people with access to a cardreader phone.
Edited: see here
http://www.paul-f.com/weCardDialers.htm
I see this seeming like a good idea if you can hand these out like business cards. But that would require a large number of people with access to a cardreader phone.
Edited: see here
http://www.paul-f.com/weCardDialers.htm
Nathan Wray@dan Is this regular 2 wire POTS? I saw one on eBay and it had a weird parallel port on the end (looked a bit like SCART?).
Yes, I immediately went to look for one 😀
@wren this one is 2 wire + and 18VAC power. The one with the parallel port looking thing is for a multi line key system
mike805@dan I also saw a 1970s autodialer that you programmed with a pencil and eraser. It had a continuous plastic belt. You filled in bubbles, then moved a slider up and down to select the number. A contact finger sensed the graphite and pulse dialed.
I guess people really did not like dialing the phone.
In India, foreign companies hired local kids to dial the phone for them. They were given a list of numbers to dial continuously until they got through to one of them, which could take a while.
geoff martin@dan I am VERY jealous!!!
Eli the Bearded@dan Nice. I've got a KS 19594 dialer, which uses tape (and is no longer functional).