Fascinating Old-School Interface Design Education: How We Used Telephones Before Dials Were Invented, and How We Learned to Switch Over
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If you want to call your friend Jim, you can say “Call Jim” into your phone and it dials him. Five years ago you’d click on the name “Jim” in your phone and it would dial him. Twenty-five years ago, you’d call Jim by punching his number into a touch-tone phone. Fifty years ago you’d dial Jim’s number on a rotary dial.
Before that is where it gets interesting.
Sixty years ago, you’d lift your telephone receiver and be met with silence. (There was no such thing as “dial tone” yet.) You’d tap the hang-up mechanism a few times and an operator—an actual human being sitting in a room waiting for just this moment—would come on the line. You’d then say “Please connect me to [two-letter district code followed by five-digit phone number].” The operator would then plug freaking wires into a switchboard and connect you to Jim.
So when Bell Systems started incorporating this amazing new interface called a “rotary dial” into their telephones, they needed to show consumers how to use them. Watch and be amazed:
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