How To Dial Your Phone

My kids have no idea how to dial a rotary phone. We were at a vendors mall and she asked me to explain the dial. Then she wanted to buy the "antique" phone. I said, "That? That's not even old. It's probably from the eighties."

Her look made me realize that the eighties may as well be prehistoric times to her.

I actually used the phone book recently when looking for a place to get our lawn mower repaired. Being the 26 year old I am, I initially searched online for "lawn mower repair [location]" and didn't find much that was useful. On a whim I checked the physical yellow pages I stashed above the fridge and, lo and behold, there was an actual section for lawn mower repaired. Much easier and quicker than booting up my slow laptop, waiting for Firefox to load, and attempting to search.

And yes, I'm aware the yellow pages are online and probably equally easy to search. But it actually takes less time to just flip open the book.

Is there anything that Betty White can't do?!

Seriously though, the Internet is a terrible place to look for phone numbers. Everyone is trying to sell you some kind of search service.

Well I learned something today. There is no zero on the phone just a numeral "oh". You'd think calling it a zero would be less confusing.

Kim, it's a zero. It's like using the short form for the year 2008 for example. '08 is pronounced oh-eight. You know it's a number.

On the phone, the number zero serves a dual purpose as O for Operator, and the number zero. It's versatile, and something you really much about once you learn it. I suppose younger people don't think about it being O for Operator, since the Operator is headed to being O for Obsolete.

"something you don't really think much about". Boy, I left out a few words there.

They said "oh" instead of "zero" because back then "zero" was considered higher math and therefore women would not be able to operate the dial phone.

This film is remarkably like the one that Northwestern Bell used back in the 1950s when dial phones first came to my hometown in eastern Nebraska. I also recall clearly that they had phone company employees come to the schools to teach children how to use a dial phone, and by doing so, the children would be able to teach their parents. Back then my late mother's phone # is PA(RK)1-5080. The local library was PA1-5000. We used to get a lot of misdials for the library from people not being careful in getting their dialing finger into the correct hole in the dial.

well it seems funny when u watch films like these but again that was new technology back then