"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 May 2004 at 19:02:51, west.ender
wrote:


"JAF" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 17 May 2004 13:00:16 +0100, Tony Walton
wrote:

Choose from their bliddy menu at random.

If you want to sepak to a human, don't make any selections.

Hmmm. Normally that's my tactic too; but I phoned my phone company
recently,
and I was told by The Voice that I would be disconnected if I didn't make
a
selection!


What happens, I wonder, if you still have an old-fashioned phone that
doesn't have a tone system?

I've often wondered that meself. Where can I get one? I'd love an old
ringing phone with a dially dial, in that old fashioned green colour.


--
Annabel Smyth
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/index.html
Website updated 9 May 2004

west.ender wrote:
"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 May 2004 at 19:02:51, west.ender
wrote:


"JAF" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 May 2004 13:00:16 +0100, Tony Walton
wrote:

Choose from their bliddy menu at random.

If you want to sepak to a human, don't make any selections.

Hmmm. Normally that's my tactic too; but I phoned my phone
company recently, and I was told by The Voice that I would be
disconnected if I didn't make a selection!

What happens, I wonder, if you still have an old-fashioned phone
that doesn't have a tone system?

I've often wondered that meself. Where can I get one? I'd love an
old ringing phone with a dially dial, in that old fashioned green
colour.

Ahem! If you're going to have an old-fashioned phone, it has to be
*black*, not one of these new-fangled *coloured* things. It's bad
enough having that ugly dial thing on it.

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 ...

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Ronan Flood wrote:
Jason wrote:

For all her shortcomings, Thatcher could at least post to Usenet.

Could she? Where?

See http://tinyurl.com/2btwj

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...

What happens, I wonder, if you still have an old-fashioned phone that
doesn't have a tone system?

Switch your phone to "Pulse" and find out:-) I found myself with one, and
ended up with the operator to set up a conference call.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
75th Anniversary 2004, see http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

In article ,
west.ender writes

"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 May 2004 at 19:02:51, west.ender
m
wrote:


"JAF" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 17 May 2004 13:00:16 +0100, Tony Walton

wrote:

Choose from their bliddy menu at random.

If you want to sepak to a human, don't make any selections.

Hmmm. Normally that's my tactic too; but I phoned my phone company
recently,
and I was told by The Voice that I would be disconnected if I didn't
make
a
selection!


What happens, I wonder, if you still have an old-fashioned phone that
doesn't have a tone system?

I've often wondered that meself. Where can I get one? I'd love an old
ringing phone with a dially dial, in that old fashioned green colour.

Car boot sale. eBay UK. Specialist retailer. There used to be a
little place in Glasgow, but you paid through the nose; still, you
hope they were fixed. We had a few; we converted Mum and Dad
to having phone sockets through the house instead of one
receiver in a chilly scullery, for some reason (come to think, if
perhaps Reader's Digest in 1965 had a feature "If Your Teenager
Is Always On The Phone - "...), but we never converted them away
from dials, even with a cordless phone. But they're gone now,
so's the house, and I don't think we kept any of the phones.

Belated thought that almost all dial phones were rented and the
legal property of BT anyway, and most likely came onto the
second-hand market through Foul Play.

And, cheaper and more versatile to get a phone in dial-style but
with the dial actually buttons; Index and Argos do them for starters;
Argos has one in mirror silver finish in "1940s style" shape (the
sort we were still getting in the seventies) with black handset for
twenty-five quid, and one in wood (I'm not sure that's authentic, but
it's - different) for forty; Index has one in candlestick style, forty
quid, and a plain white one in conical shape for twenty.

Do remember you can now have a home phone with address
book, e-mail and SMS, digital cordless, downloadable ringtones...
none of the retro phones in the book have more than last-number
redial, and if you're lucky a Recall button.

None of this is particularly on-topic in any of the newsgroups it's
appearing in, except for the bit about phones being owned by BT
and only rented.

Robert Carnegie at home, at large
--
"Are you sure you want to post?" - my software, every time

"west.ender" wrote the following in:



"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...

What happens, I wonder, if you still have an old-fashioned phone
that doesn't have a tone system?

I've often wondered that meself. Where can I get one? I'd love an
old ringing phone with a dially dial, in that old fashioned green
colour.

EBAY!

--
message by Robin May, but I would say that, wouldn't I?
"GIVE IN! IT'S TIME TO GO!" - The NHS offers a high standard of care.

"You MUST NOT drive dangerously" - the Highway Code
Spelling lesson: then and than are different words.

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

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

Tony Walton wrote in article
[...]
I ring directory enquiries and ask for the number of the London
Electricity Board.
[...]
The end. Total time (estimated): about seven minutes.

With the new "improved" privatised industry it went like this.

I ring directory enquiries and ask for the number of Powergen (who
are
the people who send the bill). [sniiiiiiiiiiiiiiip]


Why did you feel the need to involve Powergen who like the other 14 odd
parasites pay the local company for their use of the substations,
distribution network and consumer meters ?

The sequence is. (a) is there an Emergency Telephone number sticker on
the meter ?
(b) if not, find out what London Electric is called this week and get
that number.

Even in the old days you needed to know if you were LE Board, SEEBoard
or Southern.

--
Mike D

"west.ender" wrote:

I've often wondered that meself. Where can I get one? I'd love an old
ringing phone with a dially dial, in that old fashioned green colour.

See:

http://www.theoldtelephone.co.uk/index.shtml
http://www.telephonelines.net/index.htm
http://www.telephones-online.co.uk/index.htm

Prices may surprise you, though. There are plenty of old phones
on eBay but my experience of purchasing phones from eBay is not
good: much overpriced junk in poor condition that doesn't work
properly with today's telephone system.