Читать книгу The Dodo Collection - Steve Stack - Страница 25

Rotary Dial Telephones

You know you are getting old when an everyday object you grew up with now looks like an ancient museum piece. Give a rotary dial phone to anyone under about 25 and they won’t have a clue what to do with it.

Yet, despite the fact that phones haven’t had dials for more than two decades, we still refer to dialling a phone number or dialling someone up. Curious, don’t you think?

The physical act of putting your finger in a hole and moving the dial round meant that many frequently dialled numbers were fixed in our memories, far more so than in these days of speed dial and smartphones. And to prove it, you can probably remember the phone number of the house you grew up in, or perhaps your first boyfriend/girlfriend, purely because your brain has processed the movement so many times. How many numbers on your mobile contacts list do you know by heart today?

Still don’t believe me? Try this: 01 811 8055. Ring any bells?

Rotary dials were essential in the early days of the telephone system as the exchanges operated a pulse dialling system. Each number was represented by a number of pulses, which is why when you dialled the number 5, you could hear five short clicks as the dial moved back round. But, as these networks were updated, we moved to tone dialling, which required buttons.

While this technological progress means we no longer get sore index fingers from repeatedly calling Multi-Coloured Swap Shop to speak to Bucks Fizz (see, you knew you recognised that number), and no longer suffer the physical agony of getting ten numbers into an international call only to misdial the last digit and having to start all over again, we now have to put up with the annoying ‘Press 1 for customer services, press 2 for deliveries, press 3 to speak to an operator’ and so on.

Not all progress is good.

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