On Tue, 18 May 2004 20:28:35 +0100, Annabel Smyth
wrote:

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?

Oh you poor child!!

I well remember when only very posh people could have phones and that
required letters from on high to prove that you wre very important and
subject to urgent call outs or very important business that the
country could not afford you not to transact.

Then, if you waited long enough, you may be honoured by having a
shared line phone fitted. This meant that when you picked it up you
would hear the other sharee if they had beat you to it.

Telephones were black and that was that. Phones were nealy always put
into the hall for two reasons. First they were the ultimate status
symbol, now you wouldn't want visitors to your front door to miss
that, now would you? Secondly so that the bell could be heard all over
the house.

Costs were I think about on par with todays, in actual figures, not
'real terms' so actually using one of the things was something best
left out.

Keith J Chesworth
www.unseenlondon.co.uk
www.blackpooltram.co.uk
www.happysnapper.com
www.boilerbill.com - main site
www.amerseyferry.co.uk