Something I've always wondered....

[treky]

in small southern towns in the early 60s; whenever you wanted to make a phone call did you really have to pick up the receiver and ask the operator to connect you like on Andy Griffith?

[stevea]

When I worked for Indiana Bell in the 1970s, Winchester IN had a setup like this.

[merlinjones]

Rural "party lines'' could have people listening in like on Andy Griffith, Petticoat Junction, and Green Acres. These were not entirely phased out yet in the early 60s.

[Furienna]

That is what my parents grew up with.
But it was gone before I could experience it.

[Sherrie Anson]

I would be great to experience a phone call using a receiver, how bad for the generation today who didn't even have a glance of it.

[GentlemanJim]

Originally Posted by treky

in small southern towns in the early 60s; whenever you wanted to make a phone call did you really have to pick up the receiver and ask the operator to connect you like on Andy Griffith?

Interesting article:

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/obj...phone-exchange

[RetroGuy2000]

I never had to pick up a phone and ask an operator to connect me anywhere, but when I was a kid living in a rural area in the 1980s, we still had five-digit phone numbers. If you were dialing locally, you only had to dial five numbers. It was only if you were calling outside of the area that you had to dial all seven numbers.

That all changed around 1990, when the telephone system was upgraded, due to prepping for the Internet, and there sure was a lot of grumbling about having to push two more buttons on each call!

[Sal]

Did you know that on "The Andy Griffith Show" in Mayberry and in Hooterville on both "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction", the telephone operator was named Sarah? Is that a coincidence or could it possibly be the same woman? I wonder!

[Furienna]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

I never had to pick up a phone and ask an operator to connect me anywhere, but when I was a kid living in a rural area in the 1980s, we still had five-digit phone numbers. If you were dialing locally, you only had to dial five numbers. It was only if you were calling outside of the area that you had to dial all seven numbers.

That all changed around 1990, when the telephone system was upgraded, due to prepping for the Internet, and there sure was a lot of grumbling about having to push two more buttons on each call!

I grew up with that system as well.
But a lot of numbers were upgraded to have six digits in the '90s.

[RetroGuy2000]

Originally Posted by Furienna

I grew up with that system as well.
But a lot of numbers were upgraded to have six digits in the '90s.

I've never run into anyone else who was still using a five-digit system in the 1980s, so it's cool to know we weren't the only ones!

[stevea]

Originally Posted by RetroGuy2000

I've never run into anyone else who was still using a five-digit system in the 1980s, so it's cool to know we weren't the only ones!

Yes, we had it in our small town in South New Jersey, but it was in the 60s. Eventually you had to dial six digits, and finally they modernized the whole thing and you had to dial all 7. With that modernization in 1974 you could then order touch tone service.

What this five digit dialing meant for us: the exchange for the town was originally called OLive 4, and when those old names went away, it was the 654. When you dialed out within 654, you could just dial 4, and then the four digit number. Ma Bell probably frowned on that! (You were to dial the full number!)

When you had to dial a toll call outside the local calling area, you would dial 1 and the number, and an operator would come on the line, and you would give your number.

My dad was in real estate, and would sometimes make toll business calls from home, so he would dial the number as normal, but give the operator the number of his business. New Jersey Bell frowned on this too, and he got a lecture on it from the operator once. Lesson learned: don't tell the operator too much!