How's the "Popcorn" button on your microwave?

[Zulu Romeo]

The thing I can never work out is why, when those phones were ubiquitous, did they make the UK emergency service number 999, which by my reckoning is the 4th most time consuming 3 digit number you can dial?

Why not make it 111?

I remember someone telling me a long time ago that in the old days, telephone lines could trigger a signal through close (if not complete) contact with each other, with a run of consecutive contacts corresponding to its respective dialled number on the telephone set (e.g. the dull noise pips you may hear over the earpiece when dialling out a number). If the emergency number was something like "111" then it would trigger too many false alarms too easily simply by having adjacent lines rubbing against each other by accident, so a sufficiently large number was chosen instead, hence 999.

I found this article on the subject too:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8675000/8675199.stm

 

[Alidar Jarok]

In Italy, most emergency numbers are 11x based:

112 - Carabinieri
113 - State Police
115 - Fire brigade
118 - Medical emergency

Etc.

I'm slightly disturbed that you can just ring up the Carabinieri. It seems that, if the regular police isn't good enough, they should be the ones to make the call on whether to upgrade.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Well. Historically, the Carabinieri were created as a military force with police duties (i.e. crowd control and suppression of civic unrest), which means their presence is very dense on the territory. There is no town, village, hamlet without at least one tiny Carabinieri post/detachment. They are also specifically trained against violent criminals.

So when a crime of violence is involved and time is critical, Carabinieri are probably the guys you want to call.

 

[Trekker4747]

I guess on the topic of phones:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyi_q7hIOmw[/yt]

PUSH-BUTTON PHONING!
And in forty years there will still be a $2 surcharge for this service despite this technology having proliferated everywhere on the planet!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Well. Historically, the Carabinieri were created as a military force with police duties (i.e. crowd control and suppression of civic unrest), which means their presence is very dense on the territory. There is no town, village, hamlet without at least one tiny Carabinieri post/detachment. They are also specifically trained against violent criminals.

So when a crime of violence is involved and time is critical, Carabinieri are probably the guys you want to call.

Fair enough. I just figured the police themselves can decide whether or not we're dealing with violent criminals, which warrants using the Carabinieiri. Otherwise, I would think some moron would call them because their neighbor is being a dick.

 

[Yoda]

Don't have a microwave at the moment, but if I pick one up I am totally wiring the popcorn button to play a little music while it's popping:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBYjZTdrJlA[/yt]

 

[iguana_tonante]

Fair enough. I just figured the police themselves can decide whether or not we're dealing with violent criminals, which warrants using the Carabinieiri. Otherwise, I would think some moron would call them because their neighbor is being a dick.

You can do that. But then you'll have to deal with a couple of pissed-off Carabinieri, and I don't think anyone would have that.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Touché (oh wait, wrong language).

 

[iguana_tonante]

Bitteschön.

Why, what?

 

[scotpens]

On the telephone side conversation: I don't technically have anything to add to it. However, I did find out recently that European phones and American phones looked different. The one trekkiedane posted was inspired by the modernist movement and the Bauhaus school and was entirely about efficiency of function.

Back in the late 1950s and '60s, some of us Yanks had Swedish Ericofon one-piece phones which were terribly, terribly modern. They were awkward to use with the dial on the bottom, but they still look retro-cool.

This was the one we had in our old home when I was a kid. I still remember the rrrrrrrrr-tk sound it made when you turned the dial. Ah, memories...

Sorry if I sound like an Ugly American, but to me that phone looks like a toy.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Maybe it's the angle of view, but I don't see how it's much different from the one posted by J.Allen.

On the other hand "small and playful" is kinda our shtick, so no biggies.

 

[trekkiedane]

Back in the late 1950s and '60s, some of us Yanks had Swedish Ericofon one-piece phones which were terribly, terribly modern. They were awkward to use with the dial on the bottom, but they still look retro-cool.

They were alone in having the build-in bill-reducing feature; your calls tended to be quite short -Those phones weigh a TON.

ETA:

I've found an image of the first model we had when my parents first were talked around to actually having a phone...

Only, our brick walls were painted white...

Plus: I've found on-line prices for that model: 250 DKR (~45 USD) and the Ericofon Cobra (in the same gray): 600 DKR (~106 USD).