Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!netsys!vector!nobody From: laura_halliday@mtsg.ubc.ca Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Time marches on... Message-ID: Date: 3 Jan 89 17:31:08 GMT Sender: chip@vector.UUCP Lines: 23 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@bu-cs.bu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 3, message 8 I walked by a shop yesterday that specializes in antique stuff for movie sets (you know, 1959 licence plates and the like) and one of the things they had in the window was a telephone that had a dial on it. Kinda makes you think... laura halliday University of B.C. [Moderator's note: Yep. And people with touch tone phones are still a *minority* in the United States, let alone other countries. Did you know that? For all the to-do which is made of touch tone phones in this country, there are still millions of subscribers with rotary dial service and POTS, which means 'plain old telephone service'. I've had touch tone since around 1967; long before anyone I know had it. Likewise with modems: Maybe five to ten percent of all phone subscribers have one. Another thirty to forty percent have probably never even heard of them, or only know vaguely what they do. Yet we look at an 'antique' rotary dial phone and say how quaint it is. In my collection of old phones here, I have a 'french-style' unit with the fat base, the skinny, short neck, and the four fingers which hold the receiver in place. Best of all, it is a phone without a dial at all, with a brown *cloth* straight cord from the handset to the base and the jack. The bottom of the instrument says it was manufactured by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, 1930. It still works fine. Patrick Townson]