11 hours ago, birdguy said:

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

Noel

Not JFK.................

Unfortunately he led directly to LBJ, McNamara  and Vietnam.  But he was the right guy at the right time to handle the Cuban missile crisis.

Noel

Back in the 70s most houses in the UK had one phone usually in the hall. If you had two you were posh! 😁

I could never understand why the emergency services number was 999 and not 111. Barmy!  Did those guys ever work out how to dial the number?

Apparently there are a lot of young people who can’t read the time on an analogue watch. They’re wedded to the digital display on their phones! The little hand is what??? 🤣

Probably apocryphal but I heard that the 111 had proved to be too unreliable and 999 was technically more sound.

Did anyone ever manage to ring anyone when some tight git put a lock on the dial?  By rapidly tapping the levers that we’re released when the handset was picked up you could emulate the dial.

I managed it more out of a challenge than anything. Gave me a lot of satisfaction! I could have been a secret agent! 😁

2 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Apparently there are a lot of young people who can’t read the time on an analogue watch. They’re wedded to the digital display on their phones! The little hand is what??? 

Oddly enough I'm just the opposite! I can see at a glance that it's 32 minutes past 4 o'clock, but have to stare at a digital display for at least a second...

...and yeah, I've dialed many a number by rattling the hangup hooks.

8 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Did anyone ever manage to ring anyone when some tight git put a lock on the dial?  By rapidly tapping the levers that we’re released when the handset was picked up you could emulate the dial.

I managed it more out of a challenge than anything. Gave me a lot of satisfaction! I could have been a secret agent! 😁

I thought you were. MoD. Just an alias for Mi5.

2 hours ago, IanHarrison said:

I thought you were. MoD. Just an alias for Mi5.

Bugger! That's my cover blown. I was the technical guy for Spooks. 😁

2 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Oh hey, Ray's a moderator ... congrats!!  Completely missed that, sorry!

On topic, how about giving teens a cassette player, the game on a cassette, a TRS-80 color computer, and a 13" CRT TV and give them 10 minutes to get the game up and running ... it'll be the last time they complain about "load times".

Cheers, Rob. 

Thanks Rob. I had a Sinclair Spectrum and was a fan of Lunar Jetman. A game that used just 40K of memory. Just as well because the Spectrum only had a 48K memory. An OS consuming just 8K - wow! It took five minutes to load the game from cassette and it wasn't unknown for an error message to appear at 90%. Arrgghh!

On 5/4/2020 at 10:57 PM, HighBypass said:

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

 

And birds would imitate the ring tone. 

14 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Back in the 70s most houses in the UK had one phone usually in the hall. If you had two you were posh! 😁

I could never understand why the emergency services number was 999 and not 111. Barmy!  Did those guys ever work out how to dial the number?

Apparently there are a lot of young people who can’t read the time on an analogue watch. They’re wedded to the digital display on their phones! The little hand is what??? 🤣

 

Lee Evan's did a hilarious sketch on the 999 thing. 

It's on YouTube but theres an F word in it, so I'm probably not allowed to post it here

Edited May 6, 20206 yr by martin-w

A true story about the 911 emergency number here in  the United States. When the service was first started back in  1968 I was working for the telephone company in California. The first place in the state to implement the service was Alameda county. It was a really big deal and advertising the start of the service was heavy. Everyone was told to just dial nine-eleven for police, fire, ambulance and other emergency needs. A couple of days after the service started an elderly lady's house burned to the ground. When she was asked why she didn't call 911 she said she tried but her telephone didn't have a number eleven. Overnight all of the advertising was changed. Instead of the announcer referring to nine-eleven the wording was changed to nine-one-one. And that's how NINE-ONE-ONE was born...........Doug

An unintended consequence.

Noel