AT&T Archives: Introduction to the Dial Telephone
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
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This short subject newsreel was shown in movie theaters the week before a town's or region's telephone exchange was to be converted to dial service. It's extremely short-a little over a minute, like a PSA. The film concisely explains how to use a dial telephone, including how to dial, how to recognize dial tone, and how to recognize a busy signal.
The first dial telephonewas manufactured in 1897. It was part of an automatic switching/dialing system invented by Almon Strowger and patented in 1889. (You can see this switching system in action on the film "The Step By Step Switch"). But the Bell System didn't start to roll out Strowger's invention until 1919, though they did showcase the technology in 1904. In 1922, New York City was introduced to dial. The first popularized dial telephone was a desk set candlestick model; the smaller, more familiar desk set came later.
It took decades for dial to sweep the entire Bell System. The last holdout was Catalina Island, off the coast of California, which finally converted to dial in 1978. In Camp Shohola, Pennsylvania, an internal automatic switch system still connects campers with the outside world, it's the oldest functioning Strowger switch in the world.
Other Bell System films on the introduction of dial:
* Dial Comes to Town
* How To Use the Dial Telephone
* Now You Can Dial
Footage Courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ
Before direct-dial telephones, one lifted the receiver which activated a bell or buzzer at the central exchange. You would request your connection with a human operator who asked "Number, please?" and personally moved cables to make the connection. Automated-dial phone exchanges started appearing in the 1920s, and dialing was nearly universal by 1970. A few especially remote areas went directly from manual exchanges to Touch Tone in the 1970s.
thanks stan, for explaining something nobody asked about!
@@cornjobb rude, his comment provided value. yours didn't.
@@cornjobb Thanks for your input that no one asked for, A$$!
Catalina Island didn't get dial service until about 1979 or 1980!
I bet they spent 100's of hours determining the beeps and tones. Very important and critical decisions! Most of which last until this day! Amazing.
That’s what it sounded like when I was a kid. In my area, these dial tone/ringing and busy signals continued into the early 8Os
I can’t wait to get my new dial phone.
The good old days of the Bell System & their quaint dial telephones. ☎️
I still have several.
How I remember that version of the dial tone. Sure brings back memories!
Thanks for the tutorial. I just got to 1936 in my time travel machine I was hoping my iPhone would have service.
I think your iPhone would end up interfering with radio signals and you still wouldn't have service XDD
“Until Saturday mid nite, please use your current directory and make your calls in the usual manner. At Sunday, 12:01 am, you may notice your current telephone has grown a dial!”
I don't know why the fuck I'm watching it , fucking 3 in the morning
This looks very promising.
41 people don't approve of the upcoming change to dial service.
Good old days when you could see number of dislikes
auntie susan removed the dls button and even hide critical comments 😫
Bob, do me a solid and bring one of those cereal whistles with ya. Let's get phreaky tonight.
Wrong era buddy you're looking for DTMF/TouchTone
Man I miss that busy signal.
I don't it was frustrating, having to dial again every 10 minutes, or every hour, much worse if it was an emergency.
Love those short phone numbers.
They should come back for small towns. Everyone in my town has a XXX-2XXX or XXX-3XXX local number, we have 4 areas local by the same telco, if it weren't for rate billing, we could dial 5 digits, then to call a extended area call you could dial 8 beforehand. It would be nice to call 7-22XX for the bank, and not have to dial 10 digits to call an adjacent local exchange that crossed the area code border.
i grew up in the test city for push button phones. i remember that switch over too, and the new dual tone carrier. western electric was amazing. thanks tesla.
Who's the idiot who disliked this video? It's so cool.
It's the same guy who didn't understand the instructions and ended up with his telephone inside the oven covered in lawn clippings
ha
Now there are 36 persons who have NO sense or appreciation of history and its achievements. That was a technological advancement at that time. We wouldn't have what we do today without that "new" step.
Bruh. People can dislike the video if they want to, and that doesn't make them an idiot.
Accidental dislike while watching on phone. I did it once accidentally, so that's my hypothesis.
Amazing: So glad such a video is trending.
I used this type of phone back in 80's or late 70's. Same ringtone! A very sudden jump in early 90's till now.
the government deregulated and also forced competition. Before it was essentially one company with no incentive or ability to create new technology.
@@mrb152 , let's see. As a monopoly, the Bell System invented the transistor, they invested solar cells, they invented fiber optics, they invented the cell phone, they invented the communication satellite. So basically everything that you're using today on your smart phone was invented by the Bell System.
@B WO No... there are other companies that were not related to AT&T, classified as Independent telephone companies. I've downloaded a database of telephone exchanges in the USA, there still is 2500 non-Bell (in the AT&T days) companies remaining.. GTE was a big Independent, second to United Telephone, subsequently the companies themselves merged into other companies. Many states have just a few "major Independent phone companies" a example is CenturyLink, depending on where you are, it could be a former Bell territory aka.. RBOC, or a Independent company that was purchased by CenturyLink. In my state, Windstream handles a very large number of formerly small Independent telephone companies...
@@mrb152 Not quite, in some areas, General Telephone & Electronics. Half of Los Angeles was GTE.
@@kjclark1963 FACTS.
Cool. When is dial service coming to my area?
Sunday at 12:01 AM!
@@brianandrews7099 It's about time! I must be last in line to get the upgrade.
My dialtone in the 1960s still sounded like the one from 1936.
Same here.
Wait! We have rotary now? When...?
1 day ago it’s the new update
6,963 views and trending. Dammit TH-cam get your shit together!
+clarkeclarkenson most of the videos that is "trending" right now have very little views.
+clarkeclarkenson It's probably Reddit.
no joke. trending on here means who Google is promoting or who is giving Google money!
+Anthony Williamson wow someone with a brain IN TH-cam. you don't belong here
FoxJupiter you might want to take that back because I'm not sure if I'm suppose to take it as an insult or compliment.
That "busy" sound is still the same lol. 😄😄😄📲
no it isnt, not at all
Cool. When is this new dial service coming to my community?
At midnight Saturday obviously
Fun Fact: By dialing your own number and hanging up the phone, the phone would ring and parents would be pissed off because nobody answered. Hello? Heeello? HELLO!?
Oh man. The first time I ever called my own number was probably 1989-90. I was 4 or 5, and had this whole idea in my head that I would call my home number and a different version of me or my parents would answer, and I could talk to myself and become my own best friend. I was so excited…
Cut to me trying it one night with the help of my very patient dad… and all I got was a busy signal. Quite disappointing. It was small consolation a few years later when we got voicemail and I could dial my home number to check messages.
RIP operators. :(
They still had to have a lot of operators
I remember back in the day if i left the phone off the hook too long it makes that weird waivering "Ahh" sound:
Mine still does!
'Usual manner' I guess meant operator assistance -
Of course, you still have to call the operator for long-distance.
AND THIS IS THE RINGING SIGNAL!
LOOK AT IT ITS RINGINGGGGGGG
THIS IS THE BUSY SIGNAL. HEAR HOW BUSY IT SOUNDS.
+ArcdoesMC IT SOUNDS VERY BUSY LISTEN TO THE BUSYNESS
Sounds almost like the standard ring tone we have today.
What device produced those tones, particularly the simulated ringing sound back in 1936?
Step-By-Step SxS
Tone plants (sound generators) were basically rotary alternators. They generated a sign wave between 100 and 200 Htz.
If you do a youtube search of “old dial tone machine,” you will see a video titled “dialtone” that shows one of the machines that produced these signals
Boy have we come a long way, excuse me while I check my email on my watch!
And answer a call Dick Tracy.
This movie would have been played only at movie theaters.
Unreal. The PSA of the day
I wonder if this was only shown in cities, since the tones used are from a city ring tone plant.
I’m guessing they probably produced this in a city then made a bunch of copies of the film to send to various places.
Entirely new phone numbers AND a new method of calling? Lordy. We had enough trouble in my area just getting used to the then-new 651 area code around 1999. Then came 952 and 763. It was more than my 14 year old brain could compute. 10 digit dialing?! But… why?
I can’t imagine the inherent stress and difficulty of going from always talking to a pleasant operator who said “number, please?” and handled everything for you, to suddenly having to do all this malarkey by myself AND remember a new number on top of it!
Die Stimme des Ansagers, die Background Musik, das Kind, alles so Amerikanisch. Yes!
i remember when a young man in a suit and tie handed me my new directory.
This looks like a TV commercial. Where did people go to watch about this important update in 1936, as there was no television service? Did they go to the local movie theater to watch commercials, then go back home? :/
They had exhibits in the libraries, school auditoriums, and community centers (they vanished for the most part too).. many ways to get the word out... yes before a movie showing would be a great time to slip a showing in.. people didn't mind a community announcement to go with that movie they only paid one or two coins to get in, and NOT get GOUGED at the concession stand
and now im watching this in my smartphone MINDFUCKED!
It feels weird to learn how calling someone works after growing up where "telephone operator" was never a real job
What was the usual manner?
You picked up the receiver and talked to the operator. She connected you.
How do you text someone on that thing?
Back then you might have been able to tell the operator you wanted to send a telegram, she would connect you to Western Union, who would transcribe it to paper, another person would read the paper, type it on a teletype, paper tape would be produced, then these were sorted by priority and destination, then another person put the tape in a reader, somewhere around 100 characters per second data line was used to transmit it digitally to the destination city, a new paper tape would be produced there... fed into another teletype for printing. Then another person would cut each line of text into strips. These strips were glued to a yellow piece of paper, which was routed to another adjacent office, again sorted by priority and destinations route. Then the Western Union boy would drive/walk/bicycle to the delivery point knock if necessary, and say "telegram"..
Now that's the way a message was sent over the phone back then where the recipient could read it.. about 6 hands touched the process, telegrams were billed by the word as well.
Be glad technology has improved, if both recipient and sender have email access, that could be sent for free now, and faster than you could key the letters f a s t on your phone in many cases..
Now you sent a text.. the old fashioned way 😃 😈
That fallout vibe tho!
Just because it is black and white?
Vertinove No, because it has a Fallout vibe.
Tru
+Vertinove I think because Fallout is so obsessed with the 50's.
Vertinove Yeah but most equate that age to black and white images
Gee, that phone book must have several hundred listings. And that's just for New York City.
I'll bet you could have called every single one of them in an afternoon to find out if they had Prince Albert in a can.
In the 90s, each borough in NYC had its own set of huge phone books, usually two volumes of white pages, and two of yellow pages. A human could in no way read and dial by hand too many numbers when the process of moving the dial to the stop after selecting the number of pulses to send at 10 pulses per second, the phone company may redial those digits when connecting to another switch at either 20 pulses per second, or encoded, even as a unique tone per digit, similar to touch tone, but a different modulation of tones.
Those were the days! Things seemed so much simpler then (but I''ll keep my iPhone anyways).
everything makes sense now
When is my cellphone going to get a dial?
here is a phone to dream about, i was goofing around and found this. a western electric desk telephone over on ebay . it has bluetooth in it, makes calls the ringer starts when a call comes in and yes it has DIAL TONE! if you were to search it just use three words ' western electric bluetooth ' oh and a patphone was converted to bluetooth too!
Oh about 8 years ago there was an app for that, your screen looked like like a
Dial, you touched digit by digit, not sure if turning it was required, it interfaces the phone program and dials the call
we had this phone when i was young
here is a phone to dream about, i was goofing around and found this. a western electric desk telephone over on ebay . it has bluetooth in it, makes calls the ringer starts when a call comes in and yes it has DIAL TONE! if you were to search it just use three words ' western electric bluetooth ' oh and a patphone was converted to bluetooth too!
Bell also made video calls possible.
I'm not getting a dial tone on my iPhone 😔
Dial tones are only on landline. Cell phones don't have a dial tone, because it is not NECESSARY.
I think you need to look up the difference between cellular and landline.
@@antihumor2231 Why is a dial tone necessary on landline?
@@estusflask982 there’s no technical reason why it needs to exist but it’s just there to let people know that the equipment is working and ready for you to start dialing, especially back then when it may take a second or two for the equipment to start responding.
I like telaphones
The lady at the end looks like Angela from the office
My question is where was this film shown? It's not like people had TVs back then. Did it play before movies in theatres?
Ok, read the description. It was shown in movie theaters.
To think Jeanne Calment was only half way through her life when this was made!
Skip the wire going from the wall to the telephone! Did you see the old telephones with bluetooth added to them on ebay? They make and receive calls just like the day the telephone was made
You actually can buy a "gateway" yes that's the name, to extend your cell via Bluetooth to one or all of your wired sets where the adapter is, but.. special features like call waiting and caller ID still need the cell phone
In fact, with my cell phone, it's programmed to silence the ringing entirely for any caller not already saved in my directory 24/7, so 99.5% of the spam/scam calls are sent to voice mail and I'm lucky to get 4 voice mails a week to delete.
And before the cell phone itself looking at the caller ID, a service looks up and blocks known scam/spam calls, it comes with my cell service...
So yeah, they sell them. To me, the sound was better through the adapter than on the cell (back then, it's been some 12 years ago now)
I was a phone company employee and live for every phone gadget I find interesting. I even had a 1970s phone with 32 buttons that would speed dial the number for the name written aside it.
I would buy one again!
Keyboard WarriorMode=OFF
Really cool.
"And this is the ringing signal!" (Lil John plays)
Who the hell is Li'l John?
Used to be called bell telephone company then pacific bell then att
They were all one and the same. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph was the Bell operating company for California and Nevada. Their parent (owner) was AT&T.
Then Southwestern Bell started a big series of buyouts including Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Bell South and Southern Bell... then THEY bought AT&T, for the name..
Before they were a monopoly, and were split.
That's WHEN they were a monopoly. You even had to rent your telephone itself from the phone company.
Only the BELL SYSTEM was a regional MONOPOLY, many people had and still get phone service from a never related to the BELL SYSTEM company.. even in the city of Los Angeles you could move across the street and a different phone company serviced that area.. In fact Hollywood jumps back and forth across the territories.. a person who can recognize different procedures and sets can tell you if it was GTE or BELL
I thought this was the iPhone 1 ad from this vids thumbnail
Wow, a dude in a suite delivered your phone directories. Odd times.
We love vintage the introduction of the telephone is a booming industry all round the world. We want to advance our telecommunications system to biometrics & body calculation of course: people choice.Guadarrama v. United States AG, 2024 U.S. App. LEXIS 6293, __ F.4th __
Google "Dial Comes To Town"
Here from Flater
busy signal? so that's what that is!
I know when that hotline bling
so awesome!! we were once a proud nation so innovative..today we let asia make everything :/
If they make cool shit, then so be it.
We still revolutionizing. For example: Apple with smartphone, Space X with landing rockets, Facebook with social medias
+Slippy I am an android supporter, however, without Apple we would probably be still using walkmans and flip phones
Wow!
Who is the narrator?
@Roland Petit A moldy skeleton now
reminds me of fallout 4 for some reason
Ah but can it dial "popcorn?"
A rotary dial (pulse dial) telephone can call POPCORN and get the time.
@SouthwesternEagle never where I lived in a dozen metro areas. It usually was 84x-xxxx. Many times 84X-1212
We used to dial ROchester 7-8900. When I started playing with the phone, I found out that as long as you dialed RO 7, any 4 numbers after that prefix would get you the time.
Some people like myself don't even call anymore.. I've used kik to communicate with my friends more than I've ever called them.. I'm a sad fish 🐠
who was that little girl calling?
Matt Gaetz
That dial tone is death
Bruh. Without it, how would you know if the line is ready? The dial tone means your call is ready.
Nah, it along with the other tones sound way better than the modern ones.
is it dark for me to assume that probably most, if not, all people in this video are dead already?
Maybe the little girl is still alive.....who knows
Thats why old movies depress me. Because i know everyone in it is probably dead.
+Little Miss Dysthymia I do it too. Depressing. BUT in sone instances they're still alive. Not the animals though 😭
There's only 2 people in it
+Odai Abedrabbo That little girl would now be in her 90s. Not unreasonable.
Is that Shirley Temple?
where's the hotline bling comments I came to look for
I like the instructional video here, th-cam.com/video/PuYPOC-gCGA/w-d-xo.html I felt very reassured that the letters are in alphabetical order and the numbers are in numerical order. That's handy.
I lived where 221 was BAltimore downtown, 223 was another later assigned exchange (after all number use was created), 224 eventually appeared to join, 228 and 229 in the CAnal exchange, later 220 joined CAnals wirecenter.. I lived in SYcamore 796 once, then the mall appeared, served by a different building that had 373 before and added 795 for the mall.. imagine keeping all exchange names memorized. LOcust is one area code for 56X numbers but in another its LOgan.. sometimes the name is tree related sometimes street or neighborhood related, same goof for MAin and MArket, MUnicipal and MUnger.. those cord board operators just dialed the letter, in fact in the days before the public knew what a area code was, they had some places with special dialing codes they "keyed in" on 2 columns of 5 buttons, with a (Clear) KP button nearby, and a ST (start or send) the system they connected to actually mechanically stored the number, calculated the calling path mechanically and dialed through.. some extra switches to connect small areas to one another called tandems existed, and if the tandem needed to pass that call to another region, it too stored, calculated the route and redialed the call.. remember the tones on Pink Floyd's "The Wall" that's what the tones sound like, sometimes it's KP-#####‐ST, sometimes it included your number as well for billing purposes.
@@Stache987 Wow. How much time do you have on your hands?
@Clay Loomis 26 years 24/7 and a lot of TH-cam.. over 200 playlists of videos I bookmarked each nearly full to the visibility threshold of videos to watch or keep
"Connections Museum" and "sxsphil" have very useful videos.. somewhere packed in storage was a course book on crossbar switches that were no longer used at the company I worked for, it was a perquisite to request a job transfer. One tangent leads to another, TH-cam is better than drinking smoking and today's economy requiring conservative spending.. today alone I saw eggs were over $5 a dozen, we used a convenience store/truck stop in the past year they were $.79 a dozen.. my soda went from $.88 in the past 4:years it climbed to $2.08 this past year, then suddenly dropped to $1.38.. so yeah a lot of time on my hands.. I stay busy when I'm awake.
@@Stache987 Uh...... Damn. I'm not even sure how to respond to that. Ummm sorry?
@Clay Loomis no worries 😊
things were better in the old day today 2019 every thing is screwed God help us
Ha wow
Dial the number: 867-5309.
There are no black people in this commercial. I'm offended.
as you should be. thanks
Well this is 1936 and this is Pre Civil Rights era U.S, and about this time Jim Crow segregation is in full force and it's estimated that around this time the KKK lynched someone about twice a week at the height of their power and not a single one will be arrested and save for some Jazz musicians there are no blacks on television. But I wasn't thinking about that but since your tryin to be cute and bring that up if being this up as well.
+Richard Schrader troll harder
Advertisers didn't start putting Black people in their adds until about 1968, with Uncle Ben's rice and Aunt Jemima being just about the only exceptions.
Robots already taking over
Wow the dial tone sounded so feeble back then. 😂
For some odd reason i am getting scared while watching? also anyone 2019?
They put so much makeup on that girl that her head looks ten years older.
0:17 I was like: "Old telephones had satellite encryption to secure the number?! :O"
Then he continued..
Why the F is it trending tho?
And why is this trending??? I guess we still need an introduction on how to use a phone...
+Rodrick Davis Considering this video was uploaded 4 years ago ago and only has 24,000 views asking why it is in the trending section is a logical question. P.S. The Spice Girls? Are you from 1997?
666
At&t can teach you how to use a telephone.
But can't learn the definition of UNLIMITED!
I call bullshit! Is that in your directory?
I guess you better go dial 0 and complain to the operator
God that dial tone is awful. Does anyone know when they introduced the modern one?
Sometime after the 60s, I believe. Maybe around the same time we went to touchtone?
@@cellytron I think I remember hearing 1965. Not sure.
Ha! Even boomers dont know how to use a rotary phone.
0:23 this girl is creepy
but you cant get porn in it...
in a way you could. before the call could be traced, you could call any pretty girl and tug your prick
Depressing.
US GERIATRIC NATION
Get a real dial tone pal! Lol
Witchcraft
What was the usual manner?
They called first a call center and then asked the operator who answered to connect to the the actual number they wanted to talk to. The operator then connected the two lines together with a wire.