Time of day calling it quits at AT & T

[irishwashguy]

I fondly remember the time lady

I grew up in Washiington State, which is very similar to Oregon in many ways. Our time lady, at the time of her demise was 206-844-1111, although, they retired her when the divorce between Pacific Northwest Bell ( now Qwest) and AT&T occured. I assumed that it had just happened everywhere, apperantly not I guess. It warms my heart to call and hear the time lady again. It is a real shame that they have to put her out to pasture.It is nice to see that she is alive and well someplace. I will admit however, my old Big Ben, fresh from the clock shop (another dying breed), works perfect for telling time, as well as my cell phone.Even when the time change occures, or I have changed time zones traveling, it always changes.Yah, Yah, it is nice, I really have an affinity for the time lady.My vote for the best time lady, Jane Barbe...............take a listen........One of my favorate web sites for vintage telephone everything you can imagine............................

http://www.dmine.com/phworld/sounds/misc/

 

[bundtboy]

555 1212

still works in maryland - I guess until Saturday.

This is disturbing news. End of an American institution.

Good thing I do have a cell phone and a computer so I'll know what time it is.

B

 

[MrX]

The Speaking Clock is still in service in Ireland, although it's been rebranded with eircom's standard trademarked voice over guy.

To access it you dial 1191

It's always said "At the signal, it will be XX:XX and XX seconds beep..." (in 24 hour format in ten second intervals)

Directory Enquiries (DQ) (Information) have been operated on a competitive basis for some time now in Ireland (a few years before the UK and most of Europe)

Several different companies provide information services starting with 118XX they're advertised heavily and constantly try to out do eachother.

11-8-11 (Eleven eight eleven) (with the most annoying song ever)
11-8-50 (Eleven eight fifty)
and 11-8-90 (Eleven eight ninety) are the main players.

When the services were opened up as competitive market services initially, there were a whole load more, but as time went on the less popular ones died out.

http://www.11850.ie/tv_ad.aspx

 

[MrX]

Or worse!

This one's even worse!

http://www.11890.ie/content/view/19/1/

 

[rp2813]

Yes, P-O-P-C-O-R-N or just 767 + punching the receiver button on the phone 4 times would work. The official number was RO7-8900. There also used to be a code to make your own phone ring. On the old "crossbar" switches it was 960, wait for a click then dial 6 and hang up. Your phone would start ringing. Pick up and you'd get dial tone.

For the last 17 years I've lived in Verizon (formerly GTE) territory. Their time-of-day service has become a joke. Call it and you will hear something like, "At the tone the time will be four-twenty and 93 seconds" followed cheerily by "brought to you by Verizon." I know from experience that calling the Verizon business office about this will get me nowhere. Sometimes you can call and a different voice will tell you the time, and do so correctly. But most of the time, it's this crazy 67 seconds or 82 seconds BS. Knowing Verizon, they will follow suit and dump the time-of-day service too. They seem to follow AT&T's lead here in California.

Many people may be surprised to know that in the telco business offices, many exchanges are still referred to by their pre-1947 (when the North American Dialing Plan--aka area codes--was introduced) names like AXminster, MOntrose and KEllog. I still have the CYpress 5 number plate from our family phone as a kid and am using it on one of my 302 phones at home. It's the same number that's been in service at my mom's house for the last 47 years. And does anybody remember the "hang-up" sound that resembled a warped siren? I've heard it in a couple of old movies but am wondering if there's anyplace you can hear it for real anymore. Now we get that annoying beeping sound instead. As a kid, it used to be fun trying to mess things up enough abusing the rotary dial to get that siren sound, as if you'd fried the brain in your phone or something. How easy it was to be amused as a kid in the 50's and 60's!

 

[MrX]

Here are the current British tones

Here are the current UK tones, Irish ones are slightly more continental European, other than the ringing tone which is the same as the UK.

Some very proper BT announcements there too !

Sounds - Telephones UK

www.telephonesuk.co.uk

 

[MrX]

Note some are historic

Some of those (towards the end of that list ) i.e. referring to Stowger / Stepping switches are historical recordings.

The network's 100% digital, same in all EU countries. Doesn't use the same equipment as the US though.

UK : Marconi System X and Ericsson AXE
Ireland : Alcatel E10 and Ericsson AXE

 

[fa_f3_20]

Electronic switching

It's been a while since I kept up with such things, but I believe that most U.S. telcos are using some version of either the AT&T 5ESS or the Nortel DMS-100. There are some Ericsson Axe's around too. And, to Hoover, the latest versions don't incorporate the rotary pulse recognition hardware anymore. So in many areas (where I live for one), you can't dial with a rotary phone on a telco POTS line anymore either.

What was then South Central Bell first started installing 5ESS switches here in 1982. The first thing they discovered is that they complete calls much, much faster than the old swtiches did. In fact, initially, call completion was so fast that if you had one of those phones with the dial pad in the handset, it wasn't uncommon that the phone would ring and the person on the other end would answer in the time between your dialing the last digit and putting the handset to your ear. You'd start listening and instead of hearing the ringing tone, the person on the other end would be saying "Hello? Hello?" already.

Certain local denizens around here proclaimed this the work of the devil. "The phone system read my mind! It completed my call before I finished dialing!" In the next software revision, AT&T put in a provision for a programmable call completion delay. That delay is still in the 5ESS software to this day.

 

[rp2813]

Fa, thanks for the interesting read on switching equipment. I'm pretty sure I'm on a 5E at home but to my knowledge in California you can still use a rotary dial on either 5E or DMS switches. Maybe a PUC/consumer watchdog requirement. Both switches have their selling points. I particularly like the way the Nortel EBS phones work with the Nortel switching equipment. Locally, we still had some crossbar switching offices into the early 90's, and those customers were really upset that they couldn't even have call waiting, let alone the other advanced features that most phone customers already were enjoying. Remnants of the old Pacific Telephone/Pacific Bell that always seemed to be running behind the technological curve.

For those who are unfamiliar, POTS is a telco "technical" term for "Plain Old Telephone Service." No joke. I've always felt they need to come up with another essential service called "PANS" but the way things are going, POTS could be history along with the time lady before too long. It's already pretty tough to find yourself in a situation where you hear a busy signal anymore, unless maybe you're trying to get through to the DMV!

 

[irishwashguy]

I know in the Pacific Northwest

They did away with alot of the old #5,#1 Cross bar equipment as well as the Step-by Step,, Pannel-sxs switches in the mid to late 80's(imagine that some of that stuff was 50+years old in some cases, and still worked) At my house it was Nov of 1981 as I recall. The last place that switched to the new equipment was Portland Cypris which still had the old Step by step centeral office and the Portland Harold St which had a #5 cross bar, which for many years was a standard in alot of places in this part of the country, including where I grew up in Vancouver, Wa. In 1986, the PUC told the phone co's that they were required to(go to electronic switching), in order for everyone to have equal access, meaning that they could choose a different long distance carrier than AT&T. I know in our neighborhood, which is Portland Belmont(503- 230 to 239 etc) we have ESS 1-A equiped central office, a relic by todays standards.AS a result of that, I can still use my rotarty phones that will never die.

 

[MrX]

Yeah, it's exactly the same with the Alcatel E10 and Ericsson AXE switches here, your call completes instantaneously.

In Europe, you tend to have more of a range of switch vendors as we didn't have the arrangement AT&T had i.e. it made its own equipment.

Ericsson is hugely dominant and has been for decades, they actually developed the crossbar technology that switched most of the world's telephones from the 1930s onwards. AT&T/Western Electric actually licensed the technology from L.M. Ericsson.

Ireland had various eras of Ericsson Crossbars - ARF/ARM, ARE-11 (computer controlled crossbar). They were pretty common all over Europe until the late 1970s/1980s when AXE (digital) replaced them.

The other major switches you'd be likely to come across in the EU are:
Alcatel - E10 and S12 switches.
Siemens - EWSD
Nokia - DX200/DX210
Marconi - System X

Rarer:
Nortel DMS
Philips 5ESS-PRX (which is a hybrid of a Philips PRX and Lucent 5ESS switch

The UK has a long history of using Strowger step-by-step exchanges. BT never really adopted crossbar in a huge way other than for transit and gateway switches in the 60s/70s. They were aiming to jump from SxS to electronic or digital in one go. So, largely skipped crossbar as they didn't want to licence the technology.
So, instead you got the TXE electronic exchanges which were reed-relay based.

Ireland has a slightly different history:
Step by Step switches began to be phased out in the 1950s.
Ericsson ARF/ARM crossbars from then onwards.
Until the late 1970s when digital switches (Alcatel E10) appeared - they replaced the oldest gear initially i.e. remaining manual exchanges (operator panels) and Step by Step.
The crossbars were mostly replaced with Ericsson AXE

So, not it's 50:50 AXE:E10 in the eircom network anyway (the old incumbent our 'bell')

Of course, there are a whole range of new telcos which could be using anything - although Ericsson AXE seems the most popular with most of them.

 

[MrX]

UK

The UK migrated from SxS, TXE (electronic, but not digital) and various other systems to UK-designed Marconi System X and Ericsson AXE.

 

[rp2813]

1A Switch

Ritchie, I remember early on the 1A's would allow a person on a 3-way call to still get interrupted by call waiting. Here in Pac Bell territory they put in a fix so you could only have one calling feature in play at any given time. Those 1A's were only in use for a small fraction of the time the 5Xbar and step-by-steps were.

Interesting that yet another person here is stating that the DMS and 5E's don't support rotary dial. That is definitely not the case in California, and I'm surprised there hasn't been much mention of the passing of rotary dial in other parts of the country. I have long wondered when they'd finally throw in the towel on rotary and it appears a number of telcos across the country already have.

Wouldn't you know that once I found a source for a replacement transmitter for my 202 phone's E1 handset, that I start hearing that rotary is already history in other parts of the country. I really like using that phone, it has a very early dial mechanism and have it by the bed in my spare room where I can stretch out and relax while I chat. The transmission is clear and nobody even knows I'm on a phone that's over 75 years old. Reception is another story. It's a little squawky but I've gotten used to it. Apparently there is no retro-fit replacement for the receiver element that provides clearer sound. But hey, that's part of the fun of using an antique phone!

 

[MrX]

There's no reason why the digital switches can't accept rotary dial. All of ours do and they can all interpret pulses / loop disconnects as they have to be able to understand it to work call waiting and 3-way calling.

In Europe at least, there's an "R" key which is similar to a US flash key. Only difference being it sends a much shorter pulse it's more like pulse dialling 1.
10ms to 20ms loop disconnect.

Your phone company's switched the feature off for some reason, e.g. they're trying to 'flush out' old phones that can't support premium services that require a touch tone phone!

Even VoIP terminal adaptors (routers) seem to support pulse dialling !

 

[rp2813]

Thanks for that info smurp. Hopefully there will be howls of protests here in California that will keep rotary alive for years to come. So far the plan to get rid of it isn't even on the radar. But then again, nobody knew the time of day was going away until just recently, not even people who work at the phone company where internal news tends to travel fast.

 

[irishwashguy]

My 500 and both my 302's are as clear as a bell--payphon

i have a guy here in Portland that has a basement with more phones that anyone will ever need or use who repairs my phones if need be.My 302 in the living room was a mess when I got it for 32.00 off of e-bay. I took it to my phone guy, fixed and pained it, cloth cords and a new original dial (the phone is metal) and heavier than heck, it works perfect. The man said it was from 1938 and in great shape. It should work for the next 100 years if I don't throw it off of a cliff. SF, if you would like his #, let me know. He has the parts for everything you can imagine. When i move to my new house he is fixing up an old Bell system payphone,he has several of them unless i find one i like before the fact. I plan to have an antique phone booth in my family room, i mean really old.Come to think of it, payphones are becoming an endangered species as well.The payphone in front of the Credit Union was obviously brokem. When i called Qwest, they have told me they have sold off that div. to another company that does it.They could not even take a repair ticket for it. Strange huh. Another dying breed, just like the Time Lady.

 

[rp2813]

302's

The 302 phone handset had a far superior transmission and reception quality to any of its predecessors. I've got a stash of 302's that I've picked up for little or nothing over the years, the oldest and best condition is a metal 1938 vintage with brown cloth cord, and these are indeed very heavy phones! I haven't used any of my 302's for a while as the 202 takes up less space on the small nightstand in the guest room so it's the only antique phone in use right now. The 202 is vintage 1931 and the associated "bell box" may be even older, as the terminal blocks are all made of wood. I got my retrofit transmitter for the 202's E-1 handset from "oldphoneworks.com" and am very happy with it. I contacted the guy there to order another original transmitter element and he steered me towards the retrofit package instead. I'm glad he did. I can now use the 202 and not have people complaining about transmission quality like they most certainly would if I had purchased the original style transmitter. I have kept the old transmitter even though it's shot, just for purposes of putting the phone back to original if anyone ever wanted to.

Ma Bell was the original recycler. Instead of trashing all the E-1 handsets, they came up with an adapter that would accomodate a 302-style transmitter and kept them in service. I really enjoy using my 202 now that people can hear me on it!

Next project is to create a 50's office scene on my desk. I've got the perfect desk lamp and an early 500 phone with matching Pacific Telephone black ashtray made out of phone case material. The ashtray's 3 sections around the edge contain the wording "Always Alert, Nobody Hurt, Pacific Telephone" using the same lettering as on the 500 dial. My partner will have a fit but he'll live. I presume the ashtray was likely issued to phone company employees who smoked at their desks back in the day. I can't even imagine an office with people smoking in it anymore and it was really strange when I was in Paris back in the 90's and both smelled and saw smoke rising from the desks behind the counter at a bank there.

 

[48bencix]

Still works for now

The POP-Corn for time still works, I'll try again tomorrow.

All of my phones are from 1980's or earlier. I like Western Electric, for durability and sound quality, and lack of features! 2 of my phones are rotary. I found a Radio Shack speaker phone add on from 1982 that works pretty good, requires no additional power supply. So with that I have all of the features I need.

I have a separate answering machine that handles that function, and still keep my Tele-Zapper connected even though I am on the do not call list. Funny thing with the Tele-Zapper, when you dial with rotary, it beeps after each dial twist.

But, I will miss the time, I too use that feature when the power goes out, and at day light saving time change, so I can reset all of my clocks accurately. My atomic clock does not work, probably can't pick up that signal from Colorado.

Martin

 

[rp2813]

Tele-Zapper

Martin, as you probably know, the rotary dials limit the capabilities of the Tele-Zapper but I've found that even with rotaries on the line the zapper worked pretty well. We're on the Do-Not-Call list also and it's doing a good job of stopping the solicitation calls. I've turned off the zapper as I got tired of hearing that beep as the finger wheel returned to its resting point after dialing each digit. I also find the quality of the V-Tech cordless phone associated with the zapper to be substandard.

I agree that Western Electric seems to have made the most durable phone sets, but perhaps that's because it's the equipment I grew up with. GTE's equipment in comparison seemed more like toys than phones back in the old days and I hated their weird rotary dial mechanism. I did have a Stromberg-Carlson counterpart to the 302 in use for a while when I lived in GTE territory back in the 70's and the brass ringers on that phone had a very nice tone to them but parts seem more widely available for WE stuff so that's what I've collected over the years.

 

[red_october]

Phone Phun!

The newest phone I have here is the one on my desk, a weird "BellSouth" product that I bought for one reason and one reason alone -it had individual memory buttons. In my living room I have one of the old GTEs with the linear keypad; many people didn't seem to like these but I find it excellent. On one nightstand I have an old Cobra phone that's pulse-only though with a keypad and on the other I have a very, very old rotary phone (hacked so it doesn't ring, a holdover from the days when the telco checked to see how many phones you had and you could get a free extension if you just hooked up a phone that didn't ring). I have a cordless but it's a GE cordless that'a a quarter-century old! I love it!