On Tue, 18 May 2004 at 21:13:51, Keith J Chesworth
wrote:

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.

Indeed; my father said that even as long after the 2nd World War as 1952
(when he was engaged to my mother and seconded to London from his normal
offices near Oxford), a domestic phone was not a priority. I don't
remember us not having one, but I would have been 3 or 4 before I became
aware of it.

But I was probably ten or eleven - or even older - before we lost the
girl who said "Number please" when you picked up the phone....

The great Revolution came somewhere between 1971 and 1975. I was living
in Paris at the time, and sometime during those years I was able to dial
home - and, oddly, could dial my grandmother when my parents still
couldn't!

But would my grandfather, for instance, have believed that his son could
(for instance) catch a salmon in Scotland and, without leaving the
river-bank, telephone his sister in South Africa to tell her about it?
--
Annabel Smyth
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/index.html
Website updated 9 May 2004

On Wed, 19 May 2004 19:50:16 +0100, Annabel Smyth
wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2004 at 21:13:51, Keith J Chesworth
wrote:

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.

Indeed; my father said that even as long after the 2nd World War as 1952
(when he was engaged to my mother and seconded to London from his normal
offices near Oxford), a domestic phone was not a priority. I don't
remember us not having one, but I would have been 3 or 4 before I became
aware of it.

But I was probably ten or eleven - or even older - before we lost the
girl who said "Number please" when you picked up the phone....

The great Revolution came somewhere between 1971 and 1975. I was living
in Paris at the time, and sometime during those years I was able to dial
home - and, oddly, could dial my grandmother when my parents still
couldn't!

But would my grandfather, for instance, have believed that his son could
(for instance) catch a salmon in Scotland and, without leaving the
river-bank, telephone his sister in South Africa to tell her about it?

Add another 10years to that. It was more like 1962(ish) that we
finally managed to get a shared line and that was in Birkenhead

The joke being that my father was the 'toolie' at the old Automatic
Telephone Company in Liverpool who actually made the press tools which
stamped out the contact arcs for both the handset and exchange ends,
along with several other bits. Needless to say, being good scousers we
had ours and a few neighbors' houses wired up as a private system.

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

"Annabel Smyth" wrote in message
...

Indeed; my father said that even as long after the 2nd World War as 1952
(when he was engaged to my mother and seconded to London from his normal
offices near Oxford), a domestic phone was not a priority. I don't
remember us not having one, but I would have been 3 or 4 before I became
aware of it.

But I was probably ten or eleven - or even older - before we lost the
girl who said "Number please" when you picked up the phone....

We got our first phone in late 1961, a few months after we had moved into
our first house. Neither of our parents had felt the need for a phone.
Indeed, my father-in-law would not have one, because he would get called out
too frequently. In his own words, "If the Bu**ers want me that badly, they
can come and fetch me". Trouble at t'mill still occurred frequently. Then he
got the phone put in to pacify his better half and found that he could solve
most of the problems on the phone.

Incidentally, our first phone was automatic, but we could only dial numbers
on our own exchange. Bakewell was manual and we had to go through the
operator to contact the outside world. Both Bakewell and Buxton stayed
manual for some years after we had moved away IIRC.
--
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/

"Robert Carnegie" wrote in message
...
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.

There was a shop called, I think, 'The Telephone Box' in Howard Street (down
the side of Central station). I bought a green Viscount push button phone
off him, it was quite expensive and never worked properly (and had an 886
xxxx (Renfrew) phone number typed onto the white card under the handset. I
had to regularly thump it on the floor during conversations because the
sound always faded after a few minutes. The guy who owned the shop had
ginger hair and was a bit of a rip-off merchant.