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[and-your-point.livejournal.com]

Comments

[cpsings4him.livejournal.com]

Is it weird that I sort of MISS the sound of a rotary dial phone? It made such a satisfying click and whirr when you pulled the dial. :p

Not to say I would give up my smartphone and go back...! :p

[write-light.livejournal.com]

I miss it right up until I think of dialing 909-090-9090 and then the sun sets.

[furnacechant.livejournal.com]

I can sympathize. Throughout my whole childhood I wanted nothing more than to have one of those oh-so-elegant "French-style" phones in the house. Now that I'm old enough to choose my own furnishings, phones are no longer a "furnishing" at all. We really did lose something in aesthetics in going to the little boxes that fit in a pocket.

[talonvaki.livejournal.com]

Some day, YOU may have a push-button phone...

I love this!

[write-light.livejournal.com]

And then, we'll take away the buttons! >:D

[cookiefleck.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

Sometime in the 1970s when I was a tween/teenager, I read an article in Seventeen Magazine that predicted future gadgetry. Included were telephones that people would carry around with them in their pocket or purse. The phones wouldn't be connected by a cord to the wall. You would even be able to go outdoors with them, and use them in the car.

"No way is that possible!" said I, while flipping back my feathered hair.

My Android phone is laughing at me now. :-)

[ejia-arath03.livejournal.com]

Punching buttons angrily is more satisfying than rotary dialing angrily, that's for sure.

[urbantravels.livejournal.com]

Oh, you totally can dial a rotary phone angrily - as I recall from my youth, my mom could practically rip the phone off the wall by dialing - but it requires special finger muscle strength that I'm pretty sure nobody has any more. It also made a fearsome sound that could be heard throughout the house.

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

I don't miss dials because I found them difficult to use, but I miss phones that actually ring! The last phone I had with a bell was in the late 80s and I bought it specifically for that reason. I remember it took me forever to find one.

I actually remember the first time I saw a phone with buttons back in the early 70s. It was at our neighbor's house and she was telling my parents about all the cool stuff the phone company said it would be able to do--eventually. It was several years before I heard of anyone being able to do anything other than make a phone call, like check an account balance.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

I have a friend with a working rotary phone. Every time we go to their house, my boyfriend calls the number from his cell phone just to hear it ring. And then calls my cell phone with it. I can guarantee that when we get nicer phones, his ring tone will be an old rotary phone!

We have ten-digit phone numbers here now, so calling anyone from that phone takes forever!

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

I think most places in the U.S. require dialing 10-digit numbers now. I used to live in a small town where you only had the dial the last 4 numbers to make a local call! People were really mad when they took that capability away in the early 90s and a few year after that (1997, I think) the area code changed, too. That really made people mad. I had moved away by then, but I remember when my folks called me and the number on my caller ID didn't match the name and it took me a second or two to process it.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

I lived on an American military base in Iceland from 1989 to 1991. Our phone numbers were only four digits long, and out of the two phones in the house, one was a rotary dial! I'd never used one before, I was nine.

Most of the time that we lived there, trans-Atlantic phone calls went over an underwater cable and cost several dollars per minute, so needless to say we didn't call people back home very much. Near the end of our stay there, they switched to satellite, and suddenly it was much cheaper!

I can remember when I was six or so, on the East coast, and calling my mom's relatives in San Diego, and there was a several-second delay and it sounded fuzzy.

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

Long distance is so different now. These days nobody gives making a long distance call, even an international call, a second thought. My husband is from South Africa and when we got married in 1997, a 3-minute call was $12! Now it's something like $0.08 a minute with our VOIP plan. I'm not even sure because it's such a low amount I don't even notice it on our bill that much.

[aprilstarchild.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of friends that moved to my city (Portland, Oregon) from other places and never bothered to change their cell phone number. Which means about a quarter of my friends have numbers that are, officially, long distance, but it doesn't matter 'cause we all have cell phones. I haven't had a land-line in years.

When I first moved to Oregon in the late 90's I'd wait until after a specific time to call my friends on the east coast 'cause it was ten cents a minute, and I'd pay my mom out of my babysitting money.

Gosh, now it seems silly to even worry about how many minutes I use on my cell phone. I don't know of any plans right now that have limited minutes or limited long distance in the USA. Now everyone worries about their data plans instead, I guess.

[urbantravels.livejournal.com]

I put the "old fashioned phone" ringtone on my phone because it was the only one I could hear reliably in noisy conditions. It really does summon your attention in a way that no other ring does.

However, it seems like so many other people are using that ringtone nowadays that it's still hard to pick out when *my* phone is ringing.

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

I hear that one every so often, too. It seems pretty popular.

[luke-russell.livejournal.com]

Somehow I think we lost something when the Bell System was broken up and we ended up with the mess we have today.

[dubhain.livejournal.com]

We certainly did, but I can't say I miss it. One didn't own one's own telephone - it was leased from Bell at a monthly charge. Also, it was illegal to have more telephones connected-up in one's house than one was paying Bell for. They'd monitor telephone lines, at random, and were able to tell how many extensions were connected whenever the phones rang. We'd also still have domestic long distance rates at something around $0.25/minute or more. Not to mention how long it would've taken us to implement cellular technology, if Bell had still been a monopoly and major lobbyist in D.C.

Frankly, the Bell break-up may've caused some degree of inconvenience, but the advantages we've gained because of it have far outweighed whatever they may be.