Two Teenagers Trying to Figure Out How to Use a Rotary Dial Telephone

[Ktownphoneco]

Good evening all   .....   I'm not sure if this post should go here, or elsewhere, "BUT", I'm sure it'll get moved if I'm wrong.    We are in trouble.    I'm posting a Youtube video challenging 2 teenage boys to demonstrate how to dial a telephone number on a rotary dial telephone.   Hilarious !

Link :  https://youtu.be/oHNEzndgiFI


Jeff Lamb

[MagnetoDave]

These videos are staged just to get laughs and reactions.

The hardest part about learning to rotary dial is keeping the phone number sequence in your head, because you can't dial as quickly as with a Touch Tone pad. People are used to tapping out the numbers-- bam! bam! bam! just like that. But a rotary dial slows you down, so your brain has to slow down and compensate.

[robert_m]

Not sure whom you are, but this dont appear to be staged as you claim, I have rotary dial antiques, and my kids have NO IDEA how to dial out, very simular to this video.

Jeff great video - just to funny - but see my comment. above

[Stormcrash]

To be fair, push buttons are a lot more intuitive than a rotary dial, as we see a lot of buttons everyday but nothing really like a rotary dial, especially as it's disappeared from tribal knowledge and pop culture (outside of 80's and older tv shows/movies).

I got to see this several times in real life though.  My middle school (2001-2004) still had rotary 554 telephones in all the classrooms.  About half the time if a student needed to use it to call the office or dial out, they'd pick up the receiver and give the teacher a confused look for a second before figuring it out or being shown how to dial.  I'd had an old 500 as a toy when I was little, so between that and old tv I knew how to use it.  One classroom had a sticky dial and I could manually get the return speed correct

[compubit]

Add to this the fact that cell phones don't have a dial tone, and you get some confused kids...

J