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On Tue, 14 Mar 2006, Christopher C. Stacy

I'm embarbutted to admit it, but I didn't know about pulse dialing via receiver hook until the early 1980s. At that time, Stanford still had a step(!) Centrex.

I got sick and tired of rotary dialing (who'da thunk that in the 21st century rotary phones would be "retro"?), and hooked up a tone phone in parallel to my office phone. Once you dialed 9 for an outside line you got into Pacific Bell's crossbar which could handle tone, but inside Stanford only pulse worked. So, first I would pick up rotary phone, dial 9, pick up tone phone, hang up rotary phone, make call...

That is, until Eric Osman (early TOPS-20 EXEC developer) and some other people from DEC's TOPS-20 group came to visit. Eric watched my performance, and then asked to make a call. He picked up the tone phone, ignoring my reminder that you had to dial 9 on the rotary phone first, bounced on the switch hook, and then made his call...

Count a day wasted when you don't learn something new.

Stanford's phone system finally entered the latter part of the 20th century in the mid 1980s when they dumped the Centrex (amazingly, they were still making lease payments to Pacific Bell for all those rotary phones) in favor of an el cheapo NorTel system. Of course, they didn't say that it was el cheapo, and for us it was totally space-cadet with all the features; but later I found that it was pretty much NorTel's entry level bottom of the line.

Presumably they've replaced it by now.

-- Mark --

Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.