Telephone collector in the making?

[Greg G.]

My younger brother's son is only 13, but had never seen or heard of a rotary dial phone until he saw the red 500 I gave to my Mother when they were visiting her recently (gee, I feel old!).  He was totally fascinated by the dial, and even the fact it had a cord plugged into the wall.  He wanted one, so Mom called me and I sent him that brown SC I had.  I printed out a copy of a vintage dial card from that dial card archives website, the one that said "Private Line" on it, but I shopped my nephew's name just below it.  My printer isn't the greatest, but it turned out perfect because the low resolution "black" matched the brown of the telephone.  Here's a picture of the phone before I replaced the dial card.  I asked my brother to send me a picture of him talking on it.

[gpo706]

Nice story, I gave my brothers pal a GPO 746 two-tone green, as he had been lusting after mine.

I had a custom dial card made up "Summerisle 2066" as he is a big fan fan of The Wicker Man, the last 4 digits being his phone number.

So that was his Christmas present, it's a nice finishing touch making a personalised dial card.

[LarryInMichigan]

You can be pretty sure that he will be showing it to his friends and boasting that he knows how to use the dial while most (or all) of the other kids will not have a clue.  I have had some fun showing phones to the younger generation, and few of them have any idea of how to turn the dial to make a call.  I guess that it makes me look at the old films of auditoriums filled with adults watching AT&T reps demonstrating how to dial their new phones in a new light.  To us old folks, dialing a rotary phone is trivial, but to someone who has never seen one before, it can be challenging.


Larry

[gpo706]

To relate a previous anecdote, my mates kid was visiting and tried to "press" the numbers on the dial phones, bless him!

Then a shocker, my mate asked why the phones had letters around the dials...

I had to explain - (he's the same age as me)!

[LarryInMichigan]

Then a shocker, my mate asked why the phones had letters around the dials...

Here in the USA (Canada as well), it is still very common for businesses to advertise their phone numbers in alpha characters to make it easier to remember (but harder to dial), like "1-800-flowers".  Many of them include more characters than there are actual digits in the phone number, so callers will likely still be dialing after the call is placed.  That may no go over well in the UK or other places where all phone numbers do not have the same number of digits.

Larry