https://twitter.com/eugenewei/status/1251958275534475270

Noel

Brilliant!

I guess those young guys have never watched any 60's, 70's or 80's cop show re-runs..or any movies from those eras..

Funny !

On the other end of the age / communications scale I took an Ipad over to my parents before the lockdown so we could keep in touch with facetime....I may as well have taken them over an Airbus A350 and said fly that to New York.

When I was young, every call we got was a crank call. 

Our number was two longs and three shorts.  The system was common battery signaling where one crank got the operator, two shorts got the local store.  One guy's call was four longs and two shorts because we had 24 people on the party line.  Our number was 24x3.  The system worked thru all kinds of weather unless the wind blew down a tree that took out the exposed wires.  I still have a land line that usually works even when the local cell system goes down.

The down side of the old system is that it didn't support Google.

Jim Driskell

 

 

Either those guys are really dumb or it is not genuine. There's two clues straight away for them which survive even into the current parlance: The Dial Tone, and the fact that it is called 'dialing a number'. From this one ought to be able to deduce that you need a dial tone before starting to dial a number, and the word dial should make it obvious what you have to do. Additionally, there is the fact that if you've seen any film or TV show set before about 1980 where a phone is used, unless one is tapping the receiver and asking for the operator, this should make it apparent what is done.

Can't say I miss the old phones, it was annoying if you dialed a long number and your finger slipped out of the little hole when you were dialing the last digit.

And man was long distance expensive. I remember when I was a  lonely  GI getting a fist full of quarters to call my girl (now my wife) from a pay phone at the PX. 75 cents for the first three minutes then a quarter for every minute after. Not a small piece of change for a soldier but the high lite of the week.

I guess these two aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. But it's obvious that you're going to need a minute to operate most older 'tech' like that if you've never done it and have never seen anyone do it. If I didn't know phones like that I would also be looking at it for a minute to figure out how to use this. If you told me to operate a telegraph I would also look like an word not allowed in front of the camera. The world moves on, older tech becomes obsolete, isn't used by younger people and they won't know how to use it. Not really surprising. Same with new tech that older people have never used before. Or just put a non-aviation-enthusiast in a cockpit and have a laugh 🙂. Just wondering what the point of videos like these is.

Edited May 4, 20206 yr by threegreen

1 hour ago, PATCO LCH said:

And man was long distance expensive. I remember when I was a  lonely  GI getting a fist full of quarters to call my girl (now my wife) from a pay phone at the PX. 75 cents for the first three minutes then a quarter for every minute after. Not a small piece of change for a soldier but the high lite of the week.

When I was in Korea my parents sent me 15.00 so I could call them from the PX phone on Christmas.  That was the charge for 3 minutes.  I got to talk to Mom and Dad for a minute and a half a piece.

But consider this.  At that time you could mail a letter for 3 cents.  Now it cost 55 cents.  And you can call anywhere in the world now for pennies.

Noel

34 minutes ago, threegreen said:

Just wondering what the point of videos like these is.

Just to make us old folk feel a bit better when the youngsters laugh at us for not knowing how to use iPhones.  Call it payback.

Noel

31 minutes ago, birdguy said:

When I was in Korea my parents sent me 15.00 so I could call them from the PX phone on Christmas.  That was the charge for 3 minutes.  I got to talk to Mom and Dad for a minute and a half a piece.

When I was in Korea (during the early sixties) I phoned home via the MARS station in Camp Casey and got a phone patch from a generous amateur radio operator in Arizona who dialed my parent's phone in Alexandria, Virginia and allowed us to talk for fifteen minutes.

This terrific gentleman was K7UGA, the late Senator Barry Goldwater! :) During the Vietnam War he was a Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) operator. 

1 hour ago, n4gix said:

When I was in Korea (during the early sixties) I phoned home via the MARS station in Camp Casey and got a phone patch from a generous amateur radio operator in Arizona who dialed my parent's phone in Alexandria, Virginia and allowed us to talk for fifteen minutes.

This terrific gentleman was K7UGA, the late Senator Barry Goldwater! 🙂 During the Vietnam War he was a Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) operator. 

Man I wish he had won in 1964.

3 hours ago, Chock said:

it was annoying if you dialed a long number and your finger slipped out of the little hole when you were dialing the last digit.

That's why we had Trimphones in the 70's  (they had keypads for anyone who doesn't know, and an unmistakable ringtone! ).

2 hours ago, PATCO LCH said:

Man I wish he had won in 1964.

Me too.

Have you ever noticed that it's always the wrong candidate that wins.

Noel

You know you getting old when you try to use the car fob to unlock your hall door or dial a phone number on the TV remote control. I've done both of those thing.😁

Oh, I've held the TV remote control under my chin while dialing a phone number on the big old Texas Instruments calculator that used to be on my desk

Edited May 5, 20206 yr by Quasimodo