Number PULEAZE! Part Five:

[iej]

To be fair, the comparison is a bit ridiculous. A modern mobile phone is an ultra compact, very powerful computer primarily with a data connection that is faster than many large cities had in their entirety in the 1970, and it only incidentally makes phone calls.

I can’t even find an analogy that fits. A wash board has more in common with a brand new digital front loader washing machine than a smart phone has with a rotary dial phone and a steam engine certainly has more in common with a 2021 hybrid car.

If there’s one set of technologies that’s changed beyond all recognition it’s telecommunications.

Actually some of the concepts in microchips would have more in common with some of the concepts found in crossbar switching matrixes and their registers, but only at the most macro level.
So you could say a smartphone has more in common with a Western Electric No 5 crossbar or an Ericsson ARF than it does with a dial phone.

Also some of the software run on smartphones, including Unix has its origins in early digital switching systems and many computer and digital transmission technologies come from telecommunications research in the 50s-70s.

So you’d recognise more of the echos of old phone network equipment in the hardware of your smartphone than you would find anything in common with an old rotary dial PSTN telephone itself.

 

[vacerator]

When I was in

primary school, Kids still said their phone numbers with the alpha prefix. Those first two letters were the abbreviations for the central switching officees.
In our locale, we had AV for Avennue, DU for Dunkirk, LI for Lincoln, WO for Woodward, etc.

 

[Ultramatic]

Western Electric 1939

 

 

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Bell Telephone System 1963

 

 

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General Telephone & Electronics 1962

 

 

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Bell Telephone System 1958

 

 

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[iej]

A slightly unusual public arts project using the telephone as a medium.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/dial-a-seanchaí-irish-folklore-on-your-phone-1.4673952



If anyone would like to listen to a very retro art project, replicating one done in 1988 by the County Clare Arts Office, you can dial a Seanchaí, a traditional historian/poet/musician, who will tell you a tale and sing you a song. They’re prerecorded, but quite well produced.

It has an Irish, U.K. and US number.

This is a public art project. The calls are not premium rate, nor are there any charges or for profit motives. It’s publicly funded by a county council.

 

[Ultramatic]

Bell System 1965

 

 

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American Telephone and Telegraph Company 1933

 

 

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Southwestern Bell 1963

 

 

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Western Electric 1956

 

 

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Bell Telephone 1983

 

 

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[iej]

Well that’s the end of an era. I’ve just permanently hung up on the last vestige of the PSTN.

I upgraded to fibre to home and they used the copper phone line as a draw wire to pull the fibre though the ducts under my lawn lol

Seems the old policy was to leave them in place but they’re not planning to continue copper services, so now they’re convenient draw wires.

She was explaining the plan is to continue to support dial tone service using an MSAN but only for existing customers and they’ll be incentivising people to get off the copper network before switching it off.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

Sad. Nothing will be as reliable as copper wire. We are paying more for inferior service.

 

[Ultramatic]

American Telephone and Telegraph Company 1911

 

 

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Western Electric 1962

 

 

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Stromberg Carlson 1905

 

 

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Bell Telephone System 1960

 

 

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General Telephone and Electronics 1963

 

 

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Phinney-Walker 1962

 

 

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