Previous home telephone,mobile phone and internet days. How did you communicate with your friends and relatives etc?

[Accy cyclist]

I remember my parents back the 1970’s had a party line with a neighbour, if we picked the phone up we could hear their conversations.

Heck,i remember them, now you mention it! They weren't private at all!

 

[PeteXXX]

In about 1969 I used go out (sort of!) with a lass in Doncaster. Tricky as I was living in London at the time. When I wanted to have a chat, I used to phone the telephone box on the Green near her house. It'd ring for quite a while until someone passed by and answered it. I'd tell them who I was after and what number she lived at and they'd knock on her door and let her know she had a call.
This was the local arrangement as very few on the estate had their own telephone then.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

My father worked for the G.P.O & in 1965 he got promotion & moved down to the Sheffield area into a brand new house, we were the only ones in the street to have a phone, it was quite common for all the neighbours to come round to use the phone. But I can still remember in 1976 dating a girl from a small village in which nobody in the row of terrace houses had a phone, they all used the phone box outside, so you'd ring the box number, wait for an answer, ask for Carol, put the phone down & call back in 5 minutes.

 

[yello]

I remember my parents back the 1970’s had a party line with a neighbour, if we picked the phone up we could hear their conversations.

Ditto - we had a party line. That is, for those unfamiliar, a number of subscribers on the same line. Each subscriber had a distinctive ring (from morse code), you'd only answer the phone if it was your ring pattern. Our number was 313K, the ring pattern was long-short-long. This was 70s in New Zealand.

I delivered newspapers back then (on my bike as it happens) and each fortnight had to collect the subscription money (frightening to think about now; a kid carrying around a bag of cash, we never really thought about it being unsafe!) Anyways, I was at a house collecting money (I knew them to be on our party line too) and I hear their phone ring... long-short-long... it was for us! Surreal, hearing a phone ring, knowing it was for you but it being in someone else's home! I probably even said 'that's for us'!

Fast forward maybe around 20 - 25 years. I was a bit of a geek/gadget freak back then. I had a mobile phone of some kind, a flip on the Orange network, and an Apple Newton (anyone remember those?) I could connect the Newton to the phone to check mail and browse the web... albeit painfully slowly. Not that I had any urgent need of it, it was just 'what I did' People regarded me as a bit of a weirdo. Funny to think that behaviour is now very much accepted.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

Ditto - we had a party line. That is, for those unfamiliar, a number of subscribers on the same line. Each subscriber had a distinctive ring (from morse code), you'd only answer the phone if it was your ring pattern. Our number was 313K, the ring pattern was long-short-long. This was 70s in New Zealand.

In the UK it was different, there was only 2 lines involved in the 'party' you had to pick up the phone & then press the button on the top, this earth your live line to earth to give you the dial tone, the other party pressing of the button earthed the other leg, so the exchange knew which party was requesting to dial.

This was replaced in the mid 1980's with the WB900 which was a device that by some technical wizardry changed the frequency of one of the calls, so that although you were both on the same line you could both use the single pair of wires at the same time & theoretically in complete privacy. It was later developed & was how Broadband over the same pair of copper wires was achieved, so we should all be grateful of the old party line system without it there would be no affordable Internet.

 

[Rezillo]

This was replaced in the mid 1980's with the WB900 which was a device that by some technical wizardry changed the frequency of one of the calls, so that although you were both on the same line you could both use the single pair of wires at the same time & theoretically in complete privacy. It was later developed & was how Broadband over the same pair of copper wires was achieved, so we should all be grateful of the old party line system without it there would be no affordable Internet.

We had this system until 1994, when new housing in the village forced the provision of new lines. It was utterly useless. It spent more time not working than working and was roundly cursed by every engineer that visited.

 

[BoldonLad]

In the UK it was different, there was only 2 lines involved in the 'party' you had to pick up the phone & then press the button on the top, this earth your live line to earth to give you the dial tone, the other party pressing of the button earthed the other leg, so the exchange knew which party was requesting to dial.

This was replaced in the mid 1980's with the WB900 which was a device that by some technical wizardry changed the frequency of one of the calls, so that although you were both on the same line you could both use the single pair of wires at the same time & theoretically in complete privacy. It was later developed & was how Broadband over the same pair of copper wires was achieved, so we should all be grateful of the old party line system without it there would be no affordable Internet.

I recall a (BT) product called ISDN, which allowed a sort of Wide Area, but, Private (I think) connection, over the "old" copper wire system. I think it must have been around mid 1980s?

 

[Milkfloat]

I recall a (BT) product called ISDN, which allowed a sort of Wide Area, but, Private (I think) connection, over the "old" copper wire system. I think it must have been around mid 1980s?

We only cancelled our 3 pairs of ISDN lines at work about 3 years ago. Turns out we had being paying for them as a backup for 15 years or more and never used them.

 

[Deleted member 26715]

I recall a (BT) product called ISDN, which allowed a sort of Wide Area, but, Private (I think) connection, over the "old" copper wire system. I think it must have been around mid 1980s?

It's still around (I think) not worked for BT for 30 years

We only cancelled our 3 pairs of ISDN lines at work about 3 years ago. Turns out we had being paying for them as a backup for 15 years or more and never used them.

Yep typical BT tactic, ensure they speak to somebody who doesn't fully understand the system so they can talk them into anything, let's face it if the cable into the building gets chopped ISDN is still not going to work

 

[Brains]

I remember being on the top of Tryfan in Snowdonia with a friend who had one of those 'new fangled' mobile phone things (for business use).
The phone rang and he had a brief conversation.

A climber who had also just summited then launched a tirade of "I don't believe it, ...." "whatever will they think of next.... " "What sort of idiot takes a mobile phone up a mountain ....." etc.

I wonder where he is now ?

 

[Rezillo]

I can remember a TV remote control being demoed on Tomorrows World and our family thought it a hoot. Who would want to pay for this ridiculous gizmo when all you had to do was get up and press a button on the set to change channels?

It did only need to have three buttons at the time, though, and we did have the luxury of an ITT-KB set that had buttons rather than a tuning knob. As they were mechanically linked to the tuner, though, the act of pressing a button could de-tune its channel.

 

[bagpuss]

Our house phone was two empty tins and string between them . Growing up in rural Derbyshire my parents did have a landline. In a snowy winter the lines would often be down .
The nearest red box was at least 2 miles away that would probably out as well .
During the early 80's AM CB radio was my handle on the world , and illegal back then .

 

[Ming the Merciless]

We had a party line in the 70s. Phone fixed in place as well. It was a true landline.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I can remember a TV remote control being demoed on Tomorrows World and our family thought it a hoot. Who would want to pay for this ridiculous gizmo when all you had to do was get up and press a button on the set to change channels?

Back in '82 when I got married to wife Mk1 the in laws bought us a remote control TV as a present. They were very expensive at the time and few people had them or had ever used one. I set it up but did not bother with the remote at first, having only three channels and with all the buttons on the set itself there was no urgency. My wife did not even realise it had a remote, and when I finally got it out I did not tell her but kept it beside me on the sofa. So I told her that the TV had a unique feature where you could change channels by snapping your fingers at it, which I duly demonstrated while pressing the remote with my other hand.

There followed about fifteen minutes with me trying to show her the correct finger snaps to change up or down and alter the volume, obviously to no avail and her intense frustration while I managed it easily.

It was when I eventually owned up I first discovered our sense of humours differed somewhat.

 

[slowmotion]

My mother didn't have a phone at her remote place in Cornwall until about 1983. If I wanted to phone somebody, I would drag the dinghy down to the beach, row four hundred yards across the creek to the point opposite, drag the dinghy out, and walk half a mile to the nearest phone box.
The return journey was the reverse of the above.
In those days, people would stick to mutually agreed arrangements made days or weeks in advance, whether by phone or letter. Today's "there's a slight change of plan" bollocks made minutes before an agreed rendezvous would simply have been regarded as appallingly bad manners.

Harrumph!