The other day I was in the kitchen and decided to take some photos of our phone. Hear me out. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that we recently moved into the house that I had grown up in. So lately, every now and then I come to appreciate little things around this house that I took for granted as a kid, like, yes, the rotary phone on the kitchen wall.
After we moved in and finally got our phone line activated, I called our home number using my cell phone, and the kitchen phone just made a clicking noise. So I took off the cover, fiddled with its bells (ahem), and tried again. Brrring! The old-fashioned sound of a real telephone ring! I want to answer it and be all, “BUtterfield 8, how may I direct your call?”
(Speaking of our retro kitchen, Thom has been collecting items to match the yellow tile and chrome in there, and his latest find is a snazzy breadbox and canister set in exactly those colors. Yes, I said snazzy.)
There’s a niche in the hallway that used to house a rotary desk phone matching the one in the kitchen. What’s in the niche now? Our DSL modem/router and cordless phone, of course. Ah, the leaps and bounds of technology.
5 replies on “One ringy dingy”
The thing about that phone, as evidenced by your anecdote, is that it will work forever. Heck, there’s a phone at my dad’s house that was once used by my step-grandfather when he was a cop — an old, bakelite police station desk phone — and it still works perfectly.
It really shows how simple is best. Once manufacturers started to add lights and beeps and buttons to phones, their lifespan plummeted.
Of course, the phone system itself might eventually change, but consider that the basics of the system haven’t changed in over a century, it seems unlikely to happen any time soon…
My parents kept the rotary phone way past the time when most people wanted pushbutton. One reason was that our local phone company was adding a charge for touch-tone service. They saw that as a ripoff, so they kept the rotary phone, and it worked just fine!
my parents have a rotary phone just like that in their basement! every time i go home i try to find an excuse to use it.
Wow, phone systems still recognize the old rotary clicks, instead of just the push-button beeps?
In a similar vein, check out this portable rotary phone. Not authentic, but certainly retro…
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=287