Silly kids don't know how to use our old-school tech!
Telephone first?
- Thread starter Grant
- Start date
Yes, but once a group of friends and I showed a rotary phone to a 19 year old (not connected of course); and told him, "OK dial a number..." - he studied it for a minute, did put his finger in the holes, but NEVER took it out (IE he dialed a digit and kept the finger in the hole, 'helping it'.)
Afterwards we told him had the phone been hooked up and he dialed a number that way, it would not have dialed correctly, you had to take your finger out and let the rotor spin back at its own speed.
You don't actually have to take your finger out, but you have to let the rotor return back to its original position. That's how the analog system worked. It 'heard' the number of clicks as the rotor returned to its original position. But, you probably all knew that.
This conversation prompted me to re-watch Assignment: Earth last night. It's one of my least favorite episodes, because it doesn't even feature our heroes for large parts of the story. Anyway, I'm reading Leaving Orbit, which is a great book about the space age and the end of the Shuttle program, and it made me focus not on the phones, but on the shots of Saturn V and the guys walking around the launch areas in their short-sleeve shirts and ties.
I never thought about the city scenes and the launch area scenes. They imply that the two are close by, but of course a place like Cape Kennedy would not be close to a large metropolis.
You're quite right, and that's probably what was intended.
Perhaps I should have written that the viewer could infer they were close by because there was nothing spoken or shown about their locations. They do, however, show Gary being teleported by Teri from the top of the gantry back to his office.
Somewhat off-topic, but I'm reminded of the classic 1959 Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy Pillow Talk, in which the two lead characters (who live in Manhattan) are forced to share a party line. In reality, New York hadn't had any residential party-line phones since 1930.
Well, we all know that the cellphones of today would not have been, had it not been for the communicators that they were copied from.
Dick Tracy? Come on, anyone can see how similar the older flip phones looked like the TOS communicator. This guys position just doesn't hold any water. They just now came out with a wrist phone, without any TV video on it.
Indeed, the original mobile phones are nicknamed "bricks" for a reason. The flip-phone style may have developed with Trek in mind, but that wouldn't necessarily have been in the mind of the guy who invented the device from which those evolved.
See the second and third pictures in the Wiki article. Looks a lot more like a military walkie-talkie of the time than a TOS communicator.
See the second and third pictures in the Wiki article. Looks a lot more like a military walkie-talkie of the time than a TOS communicator.
Did you even bother to read what I wrote? I handily BOLDED it for you.
The first cellular flip phone came 6 years after the first cell phone.
I should add that I worked at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for many years, and they didn't replace the rotary dials on the phones until maybe the late 1990s.
The operational consoles had many direct communications lines with instant-action switches, but there was still an old-fashioned dial to access standard phone numbers.
The operational consoles had many direct communications lines with instant-action switches, but there was still an old-fashioned dial to access standard phone numbers.
I was thinking of this thread when I was watching an episode of The Green Hornet this weekend...in one scene, Britt Reid dials six digits on the phone...so close...maybe they cut a digit for syndication.
There's also an episode where Britt and Kato get a phone number by listening to the rotary dialing on a tape.
And just as I finished posting the above, an All in the Family had Archie dialing a phone...and he did six digits as well. Was this a standard thing on TV, like everybody having 555 numbers?
There's also an episode where Britt and Kato get a phone number by listening to the rotary dialing on a tape.
And just as I finished posting the above, an All in the Family had Archie dialing a phone...and he did six digits as well. Was this a standard thing on TV, like everybody having 555 numbers?
Well, Kirk mastered driving an automobile, after a fashion. Much harder skill to figure out. Just attribute it to the resourcefulness and adaptability a Starfleet captain was required to possess.
Sorry for the repeat, Telerites. I just couldn't wait to respond
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You could make a good guess at what digit had been dialed by the time it took the dial to "unwind." I was told that even older dials has sharp clicking that made it even easier. I suppose that a careful or paranoid dialer might subvert this by dragging the dial a bit.
Of course, using six digits as standard would make it impossible for a TV viewer to decipher the number and dial it. TV and movies could get in trouble if the owner of a number gets harassed because his number was used in a fictional setting.
I remember a comedian's routine that went something like this: "They gave me some gal's number for a blind date. I don't want to say that she was desperate, but after I had dialed just six digits, she answered: "Yes! I'll go out with you! Who is this?"
The adopted standard had the telephone keypad set up differently from the numeric keypad on adding machines and cash registers (and later on electronic calculators). The theory is that they didn't want people trained as touch-typists on those devices to be able to dial phone numbers too fast, as such might overwhelm the current circuitry.
if you dragged the dial you would screw up the signal sent out. Rotary dials are technically a digital signal (on/off), so you can't screw with the pattern or the call fails. Ironically, touch tone phones are an analog dialing system.
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