1971 - Touch Tone Phone Calling

[ElectroMecca]

ha ha ha

[295g295]

Before 1960, no dial at all.

/watch?v=P4v-crPSrj0

[thecooldude9999]

@295g295 the first dial phone switch went in service in 1931, the rest were installed in the early 50's

[LNERMallard]

I still like rotary better :P

[SuperSpaceGirlHDTV]

First, there was the dial wheel, then the touch tone, Now, there's speed dial!

[chachamalone]

THE GREATEST THING SINCE THE WHEEL!!

[MrLangley59]

wow i cant wait to upgrade to touchtone holy cow when is this comming out????????

[MIKECNW]

Why didn't they think of touck tone phone in the first place?

[strombom]

@MIKECNW The same reason they used morse code before modems.

[thedarkone2134]

@MIKECNW Putting a tone generator in phones in the 40s and 50s would have been a huge task. The phone would have had to have been huge. Things just were not at the point tone dialing would be possible.

The method rotary phones use to dial is simple and effective, and for the time was the best method of calling.

Just think, before the rotary phone you have to turn a crank on the phone to call the operator to connect you to someone else!

[cochranexyz]

So today, kids, when the internet is down or you have no cell signal, STFU.  You have no idea.

[70sman4ever]

PROGRESSION does not exist; we are experiencing DEGENERATION in today's technology-ridden gentrified USA. We need REGRESSION and we need to go backwards because we have hit a dead end. You dig THAT to your graves! FYI, I own a sunshine yellos and an avocado green Ma Bell rotary kitchen and desk phone cuz I am That70sMan! Catch you all on the flipside!

[HardyGirl66]

@70sman4ever Amen! And pass the biscuits! The 70s ROCKED!

[wesdsomething]

LOL'd

[davidpar2]

the first touch-tone telephone was manufactured in the 195Os. it featured keys 1-9, operator, and two keys no longer used--a "star" and an "A."

touch-tone telephones weren't commercially available (i.e. for the standard market) until 1964

[pabe518]

The World's Fair was in in 1964-65 not in 1963 and it was there I first saw touch tone dialing. Probably at the Bell Telephone Pavilion.

[fluffydolly]

still like the dial.

[Feisty1967]

We never had touch-tone calling in the UK until about 1994!!

[StapledNote]

@Feisty1967 Then why did I have a British phone from 1982 that had touch-tone dialling?

[MJ4lyph]

OH how technology has advanced since then!!!...lol wow!!

[DA90027]

It may have been introduced in 1963 at the Worlds Fair but most phone companies wouldn't offer the service until 1965 or later.

[Sheri451]

And it took almost twenty years for us to get touchtone here since 1971. We had those old farty rotary dials for years.

[dmine45]

@Sheri451 Rural areas were the last places to be upgraded to modern switching systems. Just didn't justify the cost until they almost had to upgrade everybody in the 80s and 90s.

[GhostOfACPast]

@dmine45 Those rural areas were still on StepxStep switching and when the USA went away from SxS to ESS or even DMS (circa 1988) Canada was still mostly on the SxS switching system.

How do I know these things? I used to blue box and needed to 2600hz whistle the SxS systems to get onto a trunk.  Fun at the time but that was when making a phone call from TX to NYC would run you 45cents to 1 dollar per minute via AT&T (equivalent to about 2-3 dollars a minute now).

Now we have VoIP and free LD.

[basserase]

Some phones now are so advanced that you don't even have to push the buttons. You can just say the person's name; like they did in Mayberry.

[Madness832]

The really funny thing is that they're still using the "old" dialtone for that example call. The dialtone we're all familiar w/ now (the "new" one), was introduced to a CO when in got upgraded for TT dialing.

[dmine45]

Nice old dialtone and Number 5 Crossbar ringtone! :)

[basserase]

I miss rotary phones and Ford pintos

[robuk1981]

@basserase i still have one works perfectly

[sassyface1943ho]

@basserase me to I miss rotary phones why did people make touch tone dialing

[abseconPC]

i could trick my touch tone phone my playing tone by the other phones speaker lol

[bwitz72]

When it first came out, wasn't touch-tone an extra feature with an extra monthly charge?

[ardvarkkkkk]

@bwitz72 No. Touch tone phones had nothing to do with your convenience, it was a far less cumbersome switching method for the phone company.

[infernobird]

woah this is oolllddd o,o

[UglySean]

LOL! That is so funny! My wife tells me she had to connect with the operator and had only three or four digits in her phone number in the early 1970s. Since we've always had direct dialing where I come from (since I was born in 1967) I can't relate. I guess we were sort of high tech even though I had to go to Grandma's to see colour TV.

[hakemon]

I use a WE 500 phone, old school rotary. I don't take that long to dial :P I can dial a number on it within 13 seconds approx..

[ardvarkkkkk]

@hakemon I've said for a long time that, rather than having a do not call list, they should just tell the telemarketers that they could make all the calls they wanted but were not allowed to use computer dialers and the only phone they could use was one with a rotary dial. The phone would have one difference. The dial has to be 12 feet in diameter.

[PeerlessPaavo]

Brilliant ad: Really sells the concept in under 20 seconds.

Apartment my family lived in had Touch Tones back in '72. I was too young to have phone friends, so I used ours to call for time and weather. And like many kids of that day, I soon figured out how to peck out a mean "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the keypad.

[sillynutrition10]

you are my hero

[jkeelsnc]

LOL, Yes right up until the early 90's our house had two rotary pulse dial phones in it. And both of those phones were rented from the phone company. LOL One of them was hardwired in such a way that it did not have a plug (wall phone).

How archaic that was. And yet I do miss the old rotary dial. LOL

[Teflon65]

We had a rotary dial phone well into the 1980s. A friend down the street had the push button variety, and that was where I first used a push button phone with any regularity.

[lwsmackie4]

we were considered "posh" cause we had a touch tone in 1976/77 - little did they know it was disconnected about a year later as we couldnt pay our bill!! In those days you rented your phone from BT

[Teflon65]

lwsmackie4: I remember how, here in the States, you also only rented your phone, and it was extra for certain features, like colors - other than black, and maybe white - and it was also extra for a princess phone, whether it be rotary-dial, or push button. Hence, we had the old, black, rotary phone, attached to the wall.

[Lynx251]

I remember renting phones from BT!!

We used to do it all the time, with our landline.

And if it broke they'd send out a new one in the same week - good times...

[tweepixie]

We had the circular dial phone over here in Brazil +- untill the late 90´s.

[headley62]

Those were the good old days. Remember when

you could make a crank call and nobody would

know who did it! My friend and I use to get the high school yearbook and go to the basement where his family had a second phone. We'd look at the pictures and call the pretty girls. I doubt that kids do this now.

Everything is internet or their cell phones.

[lwsmackie4]

Indeed - We used to look up the phonebook (directory) & look 4 names like "silver" & ask if Long John was in, or our favourite "Crisp" ( chips to you Americans) & ask if Smokey Bacon was in - oh we laughed for ages...... not sophisticated but we were only 7.

[irish89055]

yeah, like calling the drug store and asking if they had Prince Albert in a can(pipe tobacco) and if they said yes, well let him out....

[lwsmackie4]

LOL!!!!!! love it!!!!

[Georgiahulse]

Or you can just withhold your number...press 141 before any number and the individual you are calling won't be able to get your number.

[1952kid]

I bought two bell system rotary phones, light green and a tan color, both work great, if you remember while dialing you can hear the sound of the dial returning to the O after every number is dialed. I had to keep one cordless touch phone for those '' press one for english'' calls. i bought them at an antique store ,but they are 1960's phones.

[DA90027]

Rotary dialing is nostalgic but it did suck...can you imagine doing that now with all the damn digits due to cells and fax machines? UGH, take me back to the simple days.

[junkie4vids]

Before 1971 - Rotary phone dials and human beings at the other end for customer service

After 1971 - Touch tone phones but either a confusing maze of automated customer service options, or a language-challenged service rep from a country thousands of miles away from where your toilet flooded over.

Progress, LOL.

[blade0954]

@junkie4vids luv that comment lol

[ardvarkkkkk]

@junkie4vids Outsourcing customer service didn't happen until the 90's. The automated customer service options did not start becoming prevalent until then either. Rotary phones (and the phone systems that used them) were around for a long time after the advent of touch tone.

[70sman4ever]

@junkie4vids There is no such thing as progress, my friend, there is what I call DEGENERATION! And degeneration is what we are suffering from, but at least back in the 70s we were seeing TRUE progression. We need REGRESSION going back to a better and simpler time! You dig it?!

[cak213]

i wonder how people would react at if someone randomly just put an iphone right in that commercial. what would people back then think if they saw that? i know it didn't exist...just wondering how they would react.

[Kenn1965]

I know I'm being impractically nostalgic, but I rather miss the whirring sound of the old rotary dial telephones.

[Colortiniz]

That WC thing in the corner is obnoxious.

[RobTFirefly]

That it is.

[DA90027]

Push Button phones were introduced in 1965 but were extremely rare due to their high cost. I only saw them in very well to do homes. The first I ever saw iin a movie was 1965's The Silencers with Dean Martin, his bed phone was a push button.

[welkcirswe]

Touch tone dialing was introduced on November 18th, 1963 at the 1963 World's Fair and there were only 10 buttons on touch-tone phones until 1968 when the * and # buttons were introduced and became the standard in 1968.

[VivekRajcoomar]

gotta get me some of that!

[SonAvitch]

lol

[wutzernutzer]

We used a rotary phone until the mid 80's. And it was gold harvest yellow!

[Filmstripman]

I see exactly what you're saying.

[Filmstripman]

I hate when people put their logo on these clips!

[Mikita12131323213]

And you cant do anything about it :D

[beyondthesevoices]

There are several things I could do about it. That's what this site is all about, chief!

[RetroVintageItems27]

@Filmstripman

The reason people put there logo is because they don't want people to "pirate" there clips.

Retro

[xpidf1]

In 1992, the world got rid of Pulse dialing

[wutzernutzer]

What the heck was pulse dialing anyway?

[moosewelch]

Pulse... or Dial Pulse was used if you had a push button phone... but didn't want to pay what was.. at one time a monthly fee of less than a buck to actually have the touch tones to work in the telephone system from your phone. In essence it was a push button phone using dial pulses that a rotary phone would send.

[An805Guy]

The whole world? You are very wrong. Backward compatibilty still supports it on many systems.

[nemesis6014]

where can I get me that new technoligies?

[98770]

in my area both pulse & tone dialing can be used

[siouxsie3345]

Ahh..Technology

[thesethingz]

HA! I didn't get a push button phone until 1980!! lol

[jefferyb304]

My Grandma didn't have one until 2000

[Alprazolam]

mine too...one day she said her phone didn't work...i didn't believe her...i called the telco and sure enough the new switch they put in did not support rotary dialing...

[broughham]

Around where I live up until the mid to late 80's if you wanted touch tone service on your phone you had to pay extra for it.

[thegirl44]

We paid for it into the mid 90's thanks to Bell Canada's monopoly on the phone service.

[79thandLex]

America was way ahead of everyone else with touch tone dialing. We didn't get it in England until the late 80's!

[IdahoMoe1963]

No wonder Hyacinth Bucket always bragged about it! lol

[lwsmackie4]

Not true !! We had touch tone in 76/77 !!! Ah but Im in Scotland - light years ahead!

[YesLorenzo]

No you didn't...you would have had push button, but with pulse that needed to catch up. Probably two tone grey.

Even they were a rare novelty in Britain, then.

[brooklynheart]

LOL like many of us, I grew up with rotary phones ... and a few months ago I bought (intentionally) a retro looking phone ... has touch tone, but the buttons are where they'd be on a rotary .. and I gotta tell ya, I have trouble finding the numbers on it, it seems out of whack to me LMAO. See how spoiled I've become!!!!!

[79thandLex]

I've been tempted to buy one of those phones but I'm put off by the arrangement of the buttons...on a regular tt phone I can dial without looking at the buttons...useful in the dark.

[BricktownBubba]

What wonders the far off future of 1978 had to offer.

[Anselcarr]

ROFL.

[coolitababy]

Great commercial!