On Mon, 17 May 2004 at 21:23:44, Richard J.
wrote:

When I was a boy, you just picked up the phone, and a nice girl's voice
asked you what number you wanted and dialled it for you. None of this
prodding buttons or twirling a dially thing. It was really very
impressive; she sounded just like a human being. I wonder why that
technology never caught on ...

What's more, if she got it wrong, as she occasionally did, they
redialled the number free of charge!

Mind you, given the way the price of telephone calls has fallen in my
lifetime, I think I'd rather have modern technology. My parents (in
their late 70s/early 80s) remember the time when many people did not
have telephones at all, and if they did, ringing from London to, say,
Oxford, was extremely expensive and only done occasionally. Even today,
they don't have a phone in their sitting-room - my mother still chats
sitting on the stairs, which keeps her conversations very short in cold
weather!

How did we manage, though, without mobile phones to tell our nearest and
dearest - or, indeed, our employers - when the Tube was having a bad
hair day and we were going to be late?
--
Annabel Smyth
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/index.html
Website updated 9 May 2004