The Engineer's Notebook is a shared blog for entries that don't fit into a specific CR4 blog. Topics may range from grammar to physics and could be research or or an individual's thoughts - like you'd jot down in a well-used notebook.
Nothing could make my teenaged eyes roll back into my head faster than when my mother would discuss the automats of her childhood. Her fascination with the wall-sized vending machines throughout New York City only served to annoy me as she would lament over how they started to disappear during her early adulthood.
Now that I am an adult (sort of), I am similarly struck with nostalgia for things long gone, the latest example of which happened this week when a staple of my childhood became fodder for a pair of teenaged YouTubers.
Rotary phones were first introduced in 1904 and involved the use of the pulse-dial and a landline. Characterized by the rotary dial on the face of the phone, rotary phones are now all but extinct thanks in part to the popularity of the push-dial phone and eventually smartphones.
To highlight how extinct the technology is, YouTuber Kevin Mumstead introduced two teenagers to the device without offering an explanation for how to use it. Instead, the teens were tasked with solving the mystery of the rotary phone on their own in under four minutes, to humorous results.
I got this birthday card from Hallmark for my older sister, she loved it. It's funny the reviews on-line panned this card, but I suspect the reviewers are not old, curmudgeonly folks (like some of us ) who really appreciate the humor.
I remember the party lines. We had them in the high desert of Oregon in the sixties. I heard from my parents about needing operator intervention early on, but it would have been somewhere even earlier than that, and somewhere besides where I knew about party lines. But the high desert of Oregon, in the 50s and 60s, was extremely sparsely-populated, and everything was local telcos that were set up by someone who lived there so Bell didn't care and didn't look.
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Been away a while. Miss all my old friends. Some of you I KNOW are still around. Where are the rest?
Yup, but the only time I used a party line was back in the eighties when we were skiing at Jay Peak and we stayed at a friend's farmhouse out in the sticks. It was weird listening for the ring pattern of an incoming call. You could only make local calls unless you contacted the operator.
I remember my grandparents had a party line. Their phone ring was two shorts and a long. If you picked up the phone to make a call, if someone was talking, you had to try again later. Still, I guess it was a lot better than having no phone at all.
That's hilarious. It reminds of a comedy troupe spoof of the "Antiques Road Show" in which the public was asked to bring in their outdated electronic devices for appraisal. One young woman brought an early cell phone. She asked the appraiser what it was. He replied that it was a telephone and pointed out some of its details to her. "Notice," he said, "That it doesn't have a camera." She looked baffled. "Then how is it a phone?" she asked. After he had explained, she excitedly asked how valuable it was. "Absolutely worthless!" he said.
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It is easier to let the cat out of the bag than to put the cat back in the bag.
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