Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
When I were a kid a home phone was a novelty, and still not terribly common. When we got ours me and my chums used to ring the operator and say some rather rude things to her.
Pre- mobiles and internet time, question for those who knew it
- Thread starter Starchivore
- Start date
Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
My next door neighbour, who has lived there since the early 1940's, still does not have a land line (or a mobile).
When I moved into a house in the early eighties it took a letter from my company to get us put onto the phone line waiting list, it then took about 3 months to actually get the phone line fitted, and even then we had to share the line with next door. (and we were only 100m from the telephone exchange)
Similar situation when I bought my first flat in 1988 and again when I moved into my first house in 1993, in all cases it was the first time the property had a phone line fitted.
As mobiles did not exist, most people used the local phone box if they needed to make a call.
Anyone born before 1970 will tell you of the hours spend waiting in the queue outside phone boxes and the difficulty in getting 5p's and 10p's (and what the A & B buttons do)
ColinJ
Puzzle game procrastinator!
- Location
- Todmorden - Yorks/Lancs border
And that small fingers could find gaps underneath which gave access to shockingly high voltages! (I only did it once ...
)
Donger
Convoi Exceptionnel
- Location
- Quedgeley, Glos.
Never mind TwitFace etc. Back in the 70s we didn't even have mobile phones. In 1979 I once came home from University at the end of term to my parents' home in a remote Gloucestershire village. They did not have a telephone .... deliberately so, as my dad had only just retired from a busy job where he had permanently been on call, and he was enjoying the peace and quiet of it all. Nobody had mobile phones. I had written a letter (remember them?) telling them when I would be turning up at Gloucester Station with what I can only describe as a steamer trunk full of all my stuff.
After waiting around outside the station for an hour or so, it dawned on me that my letter had not got through by snail mail, and my parents would not be picking me up. I'd had such a rough time getting on and off busses in Birmingham with my ludicrous trunk, that the best option was to get a taxi home from the station. Except I didn't have enough money to get all the way there. If my parents were not at home, I wouldn't have been able to pay, so I would have to just ride until the money ran out and walk the rest of the way. None of this texting malarkey back then, so I was on my own.
A couple of miles down the road, I suddenly caught sight of my dad's car heading in the opposite direction into town ... presumably heading to the station to pick me up. At this point, you would just send a text in this day and age, and he'd read it as soon as he parked up. No worries. Back then, with absolutely no way to contact him to alert him to my situation, I had to do something I'd only ever seen done in the movies. "Can you turn round and follow that car?" I actually asked! That seemed to make the driver's day. It had to have been the only time anyone had ever asked him to do anything so epic. Even so, he was hardly heroic in his rise to the challenge. Sadly, unlike the movies, there was no tyre squealing, manic car chase, and the driver almost instantly lost contact with my dad's car at the very first traffic lights.
So we headed back to the station .... which was exactly where my dad wasn't. (Turns out my parents were just going to Sainsbury's). After using up most of my cab money on a pointless search around Gloucester city centre , I had to give up on the taxi ride and catch a Midland Red bus instead. I remember the driver being no help at all as I struggled to get my trunk on board, and to compound it all he flatly refused to stop at the end of my lane, two miles from home, insisting on stopping at an official stop a further mile away. I walked the last three miles of my journey with a rucksack over one shoulder and a ridiculous, heavy metal trunk on the other shoulder, almost crippling myself in the process. Better off without mobiles? No bloody way. These days I don't make great use of my mobile, and often turn it off completely, but what an absolute life saver when you find yourself in a fix. Wouldn't want to go back to being without one.
After waiting around outside the station for an hour or so, it dawned on me that my letter had not got through by snail mail, and my parents would not be picking me up. I'd had such a rough time getting on and off busses in Birmingham with my ludicrous trunk, that the best option was to get a taxi home from the station. Except I didn't have enough money to get all the way there. If my parents were not at home, I wouldn't have been able to pay, so I would have to just ride until the money ran out and walk the rest of the way. None of this texting malarkey back then, so I was on my own.
A couple of miles down the road, I suddenly caught sight of my dad's car heading in the opposite direction into town ... presumably heading to the station to pick me up. At this point, you would just send a text in this day and age, and he'd read it as soon as he parked up. No worries. Back then, with absolutely no way to contact him to alert him to my situation, I had to do something I'd only ever seen done in the movies. "Can you turn round and follow that car?" I actually asked! That seemed to make the driver's day. It had to have been the only time anyone had ever asked him to do anything so epic. Even so, he was hardly heroic in his rise to the challenge. Sadly, unlike the movies, there was no tyre squealing, manic car chase, and the driver almost instantly lost contact with my dad's car at the very first traffic lights.
So we headed back to the station .... which was exactly where my dad wasn't. (Turns out my parents were just going to Sainsbury's). After using up most of my cab money on a pointless search around Gloucester city centre , I had to give up on the taxi ride and catch a Midland Red bus instead. I remember the driver being no help at all as I struggled to get my trunk on board, and to compound it all he flatly refused to stop at the end of my lane, two miles from home, insisting on stopping at an official stop a further mile away. I walked the last three miles of my journey with a rucksack over one shoulder and a ridiculous, heavy metal trunk on the other shoulder, almost crippling myself in the process. Better off without mobiles? No bloody way. These days I don't make great use of my mobile, and often turn it off completely, but what an absolute life saver when you find yourself in a fix. Wouldn't want to go back to being without one.
Last edited:
swee'pea99
Squire
'member this?Pre-unlimited broadband shock-horror ... I once ran up a £100 phone bill IN ONE WEEK(
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0
The frightening thing is, as I was involved in communications in the late 1980's and 1990's I can actually decode most of the signal, the eight figure number call to the ISP, the HereIs and WhoRU exchange, the boing boing confirmed connection. and then what sounds like a fax connection thereafter
Gravity Aided
Legendary Member
- Location
- Land of Lincoln
Somewhere, in this house, there is still an old US Robotics dial up modem, and an Apple MacIntosh.
Gravity Aided
Legendary Member
- Location
- Land of Lincoln
I worked in a University Radio Station NPR affiliate, and we had a bank of teletype machines. If something happened, they would all set off bells to alert you of the gravity of the situation, and then a real racket would ensue. I was in the teletype room soon after President Reagan was shot, and those machines were all going a mile-a minute. We had to help read all the information, and make it into cogent digestable news for the next bulletin.
classic33
Leg End Member
I've a relative, house is 50 feet from the line, but he's yet to get a landline.
TrishE
Über Member
I've not read all the pages but in the 70's/80's I used to go off on my bike along the lanes for the day with 2p for emergencies for the phonebox and in the early eighties I communicated with folk via CB radio good days my handle was brandy snap, I wrote letters to family and had a couple of penpals....fast forward to now where I get grief from my grown up sons if they don't know where I am like when I went cycle camping and had no signal for a time, I even found a payphone but no one answered because they didn't recognise the number!
It's nice to see photos of family that live abroad or travelling instantly now though
It's nice to see photos of family that live abroad or travelling instantly now though
Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
Back in the day me and me mates would cycle 30 or 40 miles from home without so much as a puncture repair kit between us. Fast forward to today and some people get the shivers at the thought of leaving the house without a mobile.
I graduated from a Spectrum to an Amsterdam 8512 word processor
With some tinkering I increased the memory to 1Md and the chip speed to 330 MHz
The original printer used to take about 5 muinutes to print out a page of text in quality and the upgraded 24 pin that I bought was about 2 minutes per page with multiple passes for good quality text
Mine was the first word processed professional log book handed in to the School of Radiography
Again it is my loft somewhere
With some tinkering I increased the memory to 1Md and the chip speed to 330 MHz
The original printer used to take about 5 muinutes to print out a page of text in quality and the upgraded 24 pin that I bought was about 2 minutes per page with multiple passes for good quality text
Mine was the first word processed professional log book handed in to the School of Radiography
Again it is my loft somewhere
Drago
Legendary Member
- Location
- Suburban Poshshire
The School of Radiography is in your loft? Impressive.
snorri
Legendary Member
- Location
- East coast, up a bit.
Turning that one round a little to the past.
I once had a call from the local manual telephone exchange operator to say they were receiving a calling signal (ie the phone was off the hook)from a private house.. No one was speaking but they thought they'd heard a groaning sound. I went to the house, eventually got in and found the elderly occupant on the floor having fallen out of bed, dislodging the 'phone as they had fallen. It didn't take long to alert nearby relatives to deal with the situation.
