In Old Movies, Why The Dial Tone After Someone Hangs Up?
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- Brace yourselves, we're about to get into some serious detail about telephone systems. Thanks to all the folks at Seattle's Museum of Communications! www.telcomhist...
They're also on UA-cam at / museumofcomm
...and Sarah has a personal blog specializing in the ongoing restoration of the 1923 Panel Switch at the Museum: / revertive-pulse
Edited by Michelle Martin, @mrsmmartin
I'm at tomscott.com
on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as tomscottgo
You forgot to mention how actors would go "HELLO!? HELLO!?" after they've clearly been hung up on :P
>old hollywood films
>shows mean girls
Great, now I feel old.
Arkantos HAHAHAHAHA
Mean girls isn't old, it's from 2004 :)
Same.
LOL. I was expecting some black and white films to pop up but not a one. So disappointed. ;)
Well...it was 12 years ago. Over a decade is generally considered "old".
This could be because I'm in an area run by Kingston Communications (rather than BT), but we get a dial tone if someone hangs up. Thought it was normal until watching this!!!
A friend of mine gets annoyed that smartphones in films always emit a blue glow onto people's faces while they're taking a call. When in reality the screens turn off as you lift them to your face.
Andy Brice
There's a lot of short-hands or conveniences in movies to make things clear for the audience. I get annoyed, and i've seen this a couple of times, when they use custom graphics for incoming calls and texts. Are real life smartphone graphics too confusing for people? Maybe it's too small to be easily seen on camera or something; i don't know.
Andy Brice same here! It's so irritating and it's a small detail that only gets done right by a small percentage of film makers. And I'm not sure why 😕
Andy Brice
That's an unreliable feature, least on mine, due to my case.
Tell that to my phone. Half the time I go to hang up the call and I'm three menus deep in the settings because I was pushing buttons on the touchscreen with my face.
SanJose408Alex I think they do it because it makes for more interesting lighting with a plausibly environmental source.
Same as how they light the interior of a car with a coloured glow coming from the dashboard.
I could have watched a lot more b-roll of that system in action. It was oddly satisfying!
I used to work in an office above a phone exchange. Now we're in the days of soft switching the equipment just hums to itself. Maybe 3 or three times per day an engineer would call in. Back in the day there were a number of engineers there to fix it when something fell off. You could hear the slaps and bangs from the equipment and you knew each one was a call being routed through the system.
What is this "oddly satisfying" sensation? I get a lot of recommendations for these "oddly satisfying" videos and it's usually a bunch of random machinery. Is there another term for this I could look into?
We would say "strangely" or "weirdly" satisfying here in Canada but that's probably not much help to you. :)
It's probably an ASMR response.
Let's face it, old school mechanical/solid-state electronics are just plain cool. Nice video, keep it up.
TheTarrMan Electronics still is solid state -_-
Are you thinking of leaving a comment being a jerk about a friend of mine who's appearing on camera? Then you can go join the six people I already banned. We don't do that here. [Edit: yeah, I'm just going to turn off comments. Maybe permanently. It's not worth cleaning up the idle, nasty thoughts of uncaring people.]
So sad that that's a problem :(
Tom Scott It's a shame, really
Tom Scott well done ! the new generation is f'd even if you think something rude you don't have to comment it...
I hope that doesn't apply to those of us replying in her defence. Respect.
Well done, Tom
I sometimes lament the fact that kids these days will never know the deep satisfaction you get by slamming down a sturdy bakelite receiver when you're finishing a heated argument on the phone.
Sure there are lots of upsides to cell phones, but tapping an END button furiously just isn't the same.
I usually do a hard reset (hold sleep and wake for 3 seconds) to end an annoying call. Feels less like you're punching them, more like smothering them with a pillow.
Ssshhhh
*Adds to bucket list: Visit Museum of Communication in Seattle*
Wow, I never realised that dialling a number on the old system actually made physical arms move in the connection center.
Me neither, but it makes sense now that I think about it. It's one step up from switchboard operators sitting there, plugging and unplugging wires.
they still do- just on a MUCH smaller scale. computers are basically a series of switches put in complex patterns to make everything happen. now these switches are nanometers across, instead of a few inches.
The sad part? It's been so long since I've used a landline that I've honestly forgotten whether being hung up on would get you a dial tone where I live.
there is a reason that is the top comment.
The landline where I am still gets used about once a fortnight, I'll have to pay attention to what happens after the call ends.
Holy shit, I want to go to that museum.
Honestly, it's amazing. And it all works! It's in the top floor of an actual telephone exchange building: new equipment meant the phone company didn't need as much space.
And opening a museum saved them a ton of money transporting that heavy gear!
it really did look awesome. is it a public museum? if so I will make it a point to visit if I am in Seattle.
Can't imagine the amount of time and money that must go into maintaining that equipment in working condition.
Tom O'Connor if you're in the uk you can go to Amberly in East Sussex, it's quite similar to this.
On the subject of rotary phones, I work in Childcare, and very, very few children today have ever seen a rotary phone, yet as soon as they first interact with that brightly colored, classic Fisher Price rotary phone, the hand piece goes to their ear! It's amazing to watch.
Secondly, where we still mime being on a phone with our thumb in our dear and pinky toward our mouth, young kids out the flat of their hand to the side of their face, miming a cell phone. Confused the heck out of me first time I saw it until I realized what was happening!
I actually really like these old rotary phones, we had one way back when I was a small child ~98 or 99 (I'm not old lol, and we probably were not up to date). Back when I was 14 I visited a local used electronics store and they had one just like the one we had, so I had to buy it. We're using modern phones most of the time, since it is more convenient to be able to walk around with your phone, yet there are so many things I love about the old technology, that new phones just do not seem to bring to the table. Those old rotary phones were really loud, making it easy to understand what the other party was saying, and I just can't seem to be able to crank our modern phone up enough to match it. Really handy since my mother is nearly deaf!
Also, and sadly we can't use this anymore, the old phones were always recieving power from the phoneline. This means even through a power outtake you could still call someone, which is an important safety aspect, that our new Voice Over IP system simply does not have :O Thats not strictly a advantage of rotary phones though, but still, it is something where modern era tech is lacking behind!
"Old Hollywood films"
*movie from 2004*
Oh my god I've become one of those irrelevant people.
It's the same reason why frogs' sounds are translated to "ribbit". That is what frogs sounded like in California, but nowhere else.
Findecanor kinda like how that thing you use everyday that only gives you cancer in california
Impossibear It is nothing to joke about. The link between cell phones and cancer has been found.
I am from New Zealand where there always was and still is a dial tone after you have been hung up on on a landline. It isn't a continuous dial tone, but a "beeeep beeeep beeeep". So we had a joke where you'd say "What's the sound of a truck reversing?" and then hang up. I didn't realise this wasn't universal, so I always had the opposite problem with movies, wondering why people were saying "Hello? Hello??" after they'd been hung up on - why would they be saying "Hello?" when they can clearly hear the beeps that mean they've hung up on you!
I grew up in Canada in the 70's and can confirm we too had the "one side gets a dial town and the other side can't completely hang up"
When I was a kid, my sister broke with her boyfriend. He'd call and refuse to hang up until my sister spoke to him.
Bell Canada in Ontario had far end supervision and did not provide a dialtone when someone hung up.
Canada also had several communities (especially in remote places) with ILECs. They probably cheaped out on the equipment.
I remember a few similar occurrences where kids would call a person of annoyance and leave there own phone off the hook for hours even days once picked up on the other end. Without any type of call display and being in a fairly remote island community it could be days before the phone company could do anything about it. Also, during the same era when placing a long distance call the operator relied on you to tell her the number that you where calling from, which allowed me free calls to a sweetheart in Vancouver when I was a kid. It may also explain why long distance rates where so expensive back then.
I remember as a kid if someone called you and didn't hang up their phone correctly you would still be connected to them until they noticed the phone wasn't in the cradle and put it back properly.
You would pick up your phone and be able to hear your friend quietly in the background getting on with their day not realising they'd effectively cut you off from the world.
That used to happen with me with Long Distance to one of my family members. Whilst my home, indecent phone system, used AT&T's equipment, theirs was GTE, and if they didn't hang up correctly, we could be connected for hours.
MidtownSkyport Haha, yes! I had that happen as a kid..my aunt didn't hang the phone up right and later I needed to use my phone and I couldn't call out..I could hear my aunt and uncle and cousins. I was screaming their names into the phone and I heard my aunt say "what is that little voice? I think I hear Tracy." So funny.
If you wanted to be a proper little arse you could do this on purpose from a phone box.
MidtownSkyport okay I must have super old phones because this still happens . We still have cable landlines
MidtownSkyport That still happens.
I remember you could dial in the UK by hitting the receiver button in the same pattern as that of pulse dialing phones (pre DTMF phones, the rotary type). This worked until at least the late 90s, haven't tried it recently but I doubt it still does.
It should still work! I think pulse dialling is still active on BT's 21CN network - at least, that's what the documents I just looked up say :)
Yes it is - my wife has just brought a 1960s era rotary phone (as she prefers them for listening) and it still works perfectly with pulse dialling!
As an BT Openreach engineer I can confirm pulse dialing is still a thing. Some elderly people still use pulse dialed phones. Feel free to ask me any questions about it.
It still works. Be careful if you try it though because it's easy to accidentally dial 112, which nowadays will get you the emergency services.
in Australia you can still do that trick, it is just the same as using a decadic "dial" type phone I have a few very old phones and they still work if I care to plug them in.
When I was a kid we still had pay phones. If you listened close when you dropped coins in, there would be a string of tones depending on the coin (dime, nickel or quarter)... and if you could get a good recording of those tones, you could play them into a phone and not pay for the call
Side note: thank you for not turning off the comments. I hate how often loud jerks ruin the ability for communities to have adult conversations
"things you might not know" has never been truer for me. I've lived in seattle for quite a while, spent a good amount of time in Georgetown and never knew about this museum.
Thanks Tom, I'm quite a fan of your work. Both for the projects you choose to take on and your execution of them but also for how you carry yourself as a person while doing them.
The movement of those switches is rather lovely.
"Museum of telephony? Who would want to go to such a place?"
2 min later
"Oh, that looks pretty cool, where is it located? Oh, Seattle US? Aww, I wanted to go there :("
This video sums up why I love what you do. Something so simple and un-flashy, yet with such an interesting background and so well explained, cheers Tom
In my country, when I get hung up on, I get a pulsating tone at the same frequency as the dial tone. This also happens if the dial tone was played for too long.
I visited the museum a few years ago and was amazed at the know how of the staff, many of whom worked on this equipment when it was still in use. Amazing technology for the time it was in use. Thanks for bringing this story to us, Tom.
The fact that Mean Girls is considered "old" is a difficult truth for me to grasp
2:50 Cinemasins's SEAL OF APPROVAL
dial-tone-ex-machina!
Archibald Belanus
CinemaSins is just bad.
Carl Siemens maybe it's not funny and entertaining to you, that doesn't make it bad though! so please don't say that. me and others are enjoying it much. doesn't mean you should too, but badmouthing it is just rude!
Carl Siemens Makes a bold statement without anything to back it up. *ding*
Archibald Belanus *DING!*
Didn't we used to have the same in the UK?
I remember a scam where people would call you up pretending to be your bank, tell you to call your bank 'for security reasons' but didn't hang up themselves.
Yes: although it's not quite the same reason, so I didn't include it in my script! Basically, in the UK, the only way to end a call was for the calling party to hang up -- the called party had no control at all. (This was, I think, so people with multiple phones in the house could move between them easily.) So scammers would call you up, say that for security reasons you should call you back... and then when you hung up, they'd play a fake dial tone down the line at you. On some British systems, that may still be possible.
Tom Scott Interesting but what would be the purpose apart for blocking your line ? I mean what do those scammers would hope to achieve ? Just listen to conversations in your home ?
seriously the more I come to this channel the more awesome random stuff I learn :-)
Tom Scott It was annoying if someone called you and failed to hang up, though you could use the R or recall button to get a dial tone (I think you could also flash the hook, but that wasn't very reliable as the disconnect time is quite precise in the UK, unlike in the US). BT reduced the time a call will stay connected after you hang up on a caller to a few seconds, exactly because of scammers playing a dialling tone down the line scam; I presume they didn't reduce it to zero to guard against accidentally cutting yourself off when clumsy answering, etc.
Odd that you did this the US, my step-g'dad lives in the OC and used to run exchanges for the GPO - BT
That working dialing display is awesome! Too often you see technology like this either not exhibited at all or simply as a defunct hunk of metal. Even more awesome if visitors can actually interact with it (which it does look like)
TheTrueRandomness mm
Yes, the machines all work, and visitors are able to interact with them. :)
I think Scott also did a video on why frogs sound different in movies -- again, because of a particular (somewhat rare) species of frog that happens to exist where the people making the movies live.
At very least it was mentioned on QI
True. I may have mixed up the skinny wise Englishman with the blobbier one. Love them both to bits.
We've had these step by step dialing systems in Germany as well! They were replaced by newer technology some time in the 70s, in some places even in the 80s. And then, in the 90s, ISDN arrived and all the analog telephone lines were digitized. Later on, everything went to IP networking, and nowadays, Voice over IP has reached each individual household. However, the more failure proof technology was the older one from the 70s and 80s. If there was a power failure, the telephones still worked, because the telephone hubs all had backup batteries, and many of them even had diesel generators that kicked in (so the batteries were only designed to keep the system running until the diesel was at operating temperature and -speed). Nowadays, you have to hope for/rely on the backup battery of your nearest cellphone tower, and if that fails, after an hour or two, you're screwed for communications (i.e. emergency calls).
im a fan of cinemasins here on youtube, they always grand it a sin if there is a dial tone after hanging up in movies. maybe they should reconsider not doing that in old movies anymore!
thanks for solving that mistery, tom.
here in germany (in paderborn) we have one of the biggest computer museums. they have one of those step by step dial systems on display. its an awesome experience to see all the klickety clack and switchy things move and sometimes spark live in action. shows you how great old technology like rotaryphones are! :)
i love you tom. it's always a journey with you!
In Scandinavia, the old analog exchanges had the same function as "the rest of the world".It sometimes happened that the calling party needed to get someone elso on the phone, put the reciever down and went to find the other person. For whatever reason, the other person forgot to get the call, and the line was just open, withouth the other party having any chance of doing anything. This was bad for two reasons. A) The answering party had their phone "hijacked", i.e. was unusable since the line was open. And B) we payed by the minute, so it could get very expensive. I remember once as a kid, I ended up walking to a friends house to ask them to put the phone on the hook =) Luckily, it was only a number of blocks.
Up until the 80's, there were still many step switches in West Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Malibu, and northern parts of the San Fernando Valley (Northridge/Porter Ranch, Granada Hills, San Fernando, etc.). The telephone company was GTE, which was slow in converting to electronic switching. They were known for a lot of crappy phone service at the time. Hollywood, Universal City and Burbank were served by Pacific Telephone (an AT&T "Bell System" company until 1984). Step switches disappeared there sooner in favor of crossbar and then ESS. Now everything is electronic, VOIP, cable, cellular, and so on. Step has been vanquished to the museums.
you should have asked how come in movies after theyre done talking over the phone, they never say goodbye? they just hang up after theyre done talking
Because they are jerks?
Dramatic effect?
RuggedALAN that always bothered me!
I never say goodbye either. Is all the information transmitted? if yes hang up
There's no drama in goodbye. Maybe a forceful goodbye, maybe a "sir" thrown at the end, but not quite as dramatic as an abrupt and rude hang up on someone.
That's the way it works here where I live on the East Coast as well. We still get a dial tone on my land line when people hang up and always have so the movies have always made sense. This is the first time I ever heard of people hanging up and not hearing a dial tone.
I live on the East Coast but I cant remember if we get a dial tone and I really want to try it to see if I do.
BlackburnBigdragon I had the same experience growing up in Texas. This video for me is also my introduction to the notion of not getting a dial tone, lol. This is the first time I've dial tones discussed in terms of being exclusive to Southern California! :D
On a scale of interest about this, I'd say it's like 5/10. When Tom presents it, it's 11/10. It's bizarre, really!
Growing up in California, I thought that's how everyone experienced the phone, hahah it's interesting learning otherwise, great video, and great guest presenter, keep up the good work! Hope to visit the museum one day.
Arnhem Pictures On the East Coast, we'd hear a click, then silence, then in about 10 seconds if you don't hang up, a fast, loud version of the busy signal. I think the signal was to notify someone that thought they hung the phone up but didn't do it quite right that the phone was still off hook.
It pretty much is my experience from here in the UK too, seems to be as Sarah said, characteristic of step by step systems.
There was a lot of electromechanical loveliness in this video.
This is what I experienced in 1960's midwest. In those days, if you got a phone call, you could not hang up unless the person calling hung up the phone. This made it possible for some serious harassing phone calls. It also made it possible for some very funny ones, like the time my brother called me while I was babysitting, and we chatted while we both were watching the Valley of the Gwangi movie. But soon, I noticed that my brother was snoring into the phone, having fallen asleep. I yelled at him, I whistled at him, I made all sorts of noises, but he didn't hear me at all. I hung up the phone, hoping it would disconnect, but no, every time I picked up, I was greeted by his nasal snoring, going on uninterrupted. Again and again I tried picking up, but no dice. He was utterly asleep and the phone line was not going to be used for anything else for the rest of the night. It wasn't until I got home in the morning that I could hang up the phone after making a lot of fun of my brother for his snoring over the phone lines. Later, Ma Bell figured this one out and made the lines disconnect after a certain number of seconds if either party hung up.
I'm sure here in the UK, if the person calling you hangs up first, we hear a tone. If they don't hang up and you try to hang up, the line stays connected - there was aa scam some time ago that cashed in on that fact. I think the scam was that someone called you claiming to be from a phone company trying to sell you a deal and telling you that if you didn't sign up they would cut you off. When you told them to get lost, they would say, "ok after I hang up on you, please call your phone company, and if you fail phone me back and we'll talk." Of course, they would keep the call active, you would hang up and dial a number and the line would be dead. So you would dial the number for the scam and they would pick it up and say, "Ah ha now you believe me, so send me money and I'll fix your phone." Who;e 99% of us would not fall for that, 1% of a population of 6 mill will make you rich!
Another stop to make next time I'm in the area! :)
Sidenote, the echo when Sarah's mic was picking up the "to" phone was cool. Wouldn't have expected the mic to pick it up that well.
CheeseTaterson I thought that was added in post.
I'm not so sure whether that was added after the fact to make a point or actual echo.
Love the giant mechanical machines connecting calls. My mum used to be a telephone operator back in the days when it required a person to physically put a plug into a socket to connect you...
Sweet!
I work with digital phone systems, but I love the old analogue telephone exchange machinery with its electromagnets and ratchets. No level of verbosity on the console beats actually seeing the parts moving in response to the dialling pulses!
You know you're old when the movies from your teen years are now called "old" :-)
Anything that is more than 3 years old is "old" as far as the media industry is concerned. Media is very transient and much of it becomes quickly forgotten unless it's deemed a classic in it's form, it may seem a bit sad to those of us that have a deep appreciation of films and music, but it's true.
I remember shouting down the phone trying to get the callers attention when they didn't hang up properly, oh the good old days. (at least I could remember my home phone number it was only 5 digits)
I grew up in the Toronto area in the 80s and 90s, and we had the same thing. I didn't realize until now that this wasn't how all POTS worked.
I have a step-by-step exchange in my garage, which I'm working on to get fully working (it's only 'partly' working at the moment, in that I can ring extension to extension, but not in or out) - a large chunk of mechanical loveliness. I shall have to test it to see if it gives dial tone after hanging up as in the video (I'm not sure if it is different here in the UK or not). Thanks for prompting me to have another go.
Sometimes a disconnect tone might actually be useful...
Enable it on your cell phone, then. As far as I know, they all have the option.
This video is off the hook
Tom isn't wearing a red shirt. Unsubbing!
Charoula1608 he is under his grey hoodie. Is only other piece of clothing
He is wearing a red shirt.
He's just wearing a grey hoodie over it, is all.
Tom always wears a grey hoodie in situations where it's either too cold to wear just the t-shirt or slightly inappropriate. (Also, if you look closely he's wearing the red t-shirt underneath the hoodie.)
He's wearing his grey hoodie, just as iconic if you go back a bit.
Maybe it's an imposter. Should we call the police? #SaveTomScott
I cannot remember my last time that i used a true analog landline. Must have been a decade ago.
My landline Panasonic is literally rining as I read this.
mastersoftoday answer it
Holly Boreham Noone I know calls me at home, I'm pretty sure it would be a telemarketer.
We have a landline because making calls with it is practically free compared to mobile.
`There are no analog lines left, they were all quietly converted to VOIP.
That depends on whether you have a calling party hold or called party hold exchange. Both kinds exist. You don't get to many crank calls in the called party hold exchanges, because all the person being harassed has to do is not hang up. They then walk to the neighbors house, and call the police. Usually the person doing the harassing is suspected. The cops will send officers to both houses, if the officers can talk to each on the phones, then they make an arrest.
Nixie tubes, Nixie tubes everywhere. THEY FOLLOW ME.
I was looking into buying 6 IN-14 tubes just last night lol :D
RickyRicardo80 nixie tubes are awesome, I wanna use them as a speedometer in a car some day.
Check out the channel of Dalibor Farny, he makes them and it's an amazing watch. They seem to pop up everywhere recently, and rightly so. They are awesome. I'm thinking of building a Russian DIY module for my modular synth that uses a Nixie, just for the looks of it.
BTW, Dalibor Farny doesn't make the watches, that's Cathode Corner. Dalibor makes big-ass tubes that go in clocks, like, really big clocks.
Hope to see a small tube one day that does fit in a watch though. Both watches from Cathode Corner really clash design-wise with the old tech inside them. Here's hoping Dalibor can do better.
I loved learning about Nixie tubes over at Techmoan.
It's one of those moments when I learn they do stuff differently in different places. I grew up with analogue automatic telephone system, it's changed to digital now. And here in Russia today it is nearly the same as it was before: when you pick up before dialing, you heal a long tone, the same one as we hear in this video. When one of the parties hangs up, the other one hears short beeps and they have to hang up too to make the line available for the next call. The difference for phone calls' sounds today is that you can apply to your phone company to switch to tone dial (if it's not the default). And before there was only dc (pulse) dial, when after pushing a button (or rotating the disc) you heard as many pulses (softish clicks, sort of), as the number you chose (0 = 10 pulses).
Speaking of telephone museums, Amberly in East Sussex in the U.K has a great display of early automated telephone exchanges and manual ones and you can try out anything. There are other things in the museum, but that's the best attraction.
I worked with Sarah Autumn. She knows what she is talking about.
Old movies from the 90's and early 2000's? Come on man, that hurts. You need to do a few more videos here, this stuff awesome.
so is this museum an old telephone switch station, or have they just put a bunch of old telecom equipment here as a display for the museum?
Both! And it's actively maintained.
As someone who worked on exchange equipment years ago I am glad to see that this place exists, so few examples are left (well in Australia basically none that I know of which is kind of sad)
There's a Telecommunications museum in Melbourne!
There may be a few independent collections and smaller museums that have some active stuff dating from anywhere from manual magneto switchboards to the first electronic systems :)
check out www.ckts.info/ :)
Even moreso, many of the older volunteers worked for Ma Bell back in the day.
My trip there this summer was, as best described by another volunteer, "Phone Church".
It would be a shame to turn off comments (permanently no less) because of a few jerks. Having said that, I'm sure it must be discouraging to wade through their negative slurry.
I lived in Seattle most my life and never even herd of that place, for sure want to visit it look a pretty cool
Nine seconds in...NIXIE TUBES!!! YAYYYYYY!!!
MOAR please!
That step-by-step system is like the audio equivalent of a typewriter: a BEAUTIFUL machine to watch in motion and the sound it makes is just awesome! ⚙️⚙️⚙️ To think that was what was happening on the other end of those old rotary phones
Confirming what everyone already knew: that Hollywood is another planet.
eh, no more another planet than everywhere else.
Planet Hollywood? Overpriced burgers.
Tell me about it. Hell, I think Five Guys is overpriced for what you get.
neeneko Except Florida.
Planet Hollywood?
I guess I'm showing my age when I remember the squeak of 2600 Hz disconnect on long-distance calls...I worked several summers for the phone company when I was an undergrad in the midst of the transition from step to electronic switching.
I lived in a very small rural town that had an old crossbar system. I was very popular with a few hackers from the city since numbers couldn't be traced directly to my home, only to the crossbar station.
I bet the dial tones stayed in movies for similar reasons as Coconut Hooves.
old movies? i feel old
well by movie age standards the fact that you can type words in a coherant maner, indicates that you are old
In The Netherlands, I remember getting the "line busy"-signal when you got hung up upon. Not sure if that worked for both the caller and the callee, though. Quick, to the time machine!
Man, theres just a museum for everything these days. Fascinating video, Tom.
The technology museum in Vantaa, Finland also had old telephone switches you could operate and watch the relays clack away. I don't think they're on display right now, but they also had examples of digital call connecting and whatnot, with explanations of how they worked.
THANK YOU for making this video! It always bothered me whenever this happened in movies. Now I know why sound designers put this in.
Would love to see a video on how that step by step system works
+Tom Scott: It would be great it you could go into more detail on how the Step-By-Step machine works and how it replaced the Job of operators. Thanks!
Now, that would end the "you hung up, no you hung up" argument. It should be, "just hang up, you called, don't keep my line busy" :)
that brings back memories of my induction training at GPT... thanks for the nostalgia.
I'm going to Seattle in January and I'm so excited to visit this place
In Australia, our system beeps when someone hangs up.
Damn, so this is the tech that goes behind dialing/making calls back in the days, looks so mechanically complicated and cool. I'd be really interesting in a video explaining more about that particular type of machine/"router"/whatever it is, shown in the video.
i grew up in southern california and it was fairly common to call someone, and whoever answered would forget to hang up that phone when the person you were calling for picked up from a different extension. you couldn't call out, or receive calls, until someone at their house noticed and hung up the phone. if i'm remembering correctly, after awhile, the off the hook phone would emit an annoying loud noise and start repeating 'if you'd like to make a call, hang up and dial again'.
Oh god the detail its killing me.
More interesting than I thought it was going to be!
I think we had that step-by-step system in the Midwest as well. I remember plenty of times where you would hang up on someone, attempt to make a call, and the person is still on the other line, "Hang up already, Kevin!".
The Stash This also ties in to the old prank of calling a long distance number and leaving it off the hook (like in a phone booth), effectively disabling the phone line of the receiving party.
I think it must have been like that everywhere at one time.
Well, my degree in telecomms has come in handy once now; I already knew this!
Otherwise known as the Strowger Switch (named after its inventor Almon Brown Strowger). I work for BT and I've not heard it called 'step by step' before but that is exactly what it does so makes sense...
Isn't that such an amazing museum? Next door used to be the old "hat and boots" gas station, something that had to be seen to be believed.
I didn't even know this museum existed. leave it to Tom Scott to teach me more about my home town
We were taught about circuit switching in class, it's cool to actually see the physical switches going click click in real life though. Excellent video.
That must be where us old-timey phreaks go when we die. The land of COCOTs and switches.
I live near Seattle and had no idea there was a Museum of Communications! I love these videos! Thanks?
I get seriously jealous of all the great places that Tom gets to visit...
Bring back the old outro : "And that, is something you might not have known"
You should do more videos on old telephone systems.
Oh damn. Back in early 1990s, I remember that my friends told me that if you called someone and let them hang up on you, but didn't hang up yourself, the line would stay open. So we tried that out! ...and it, of course, failed. We were so very very massively disappointed, and this was probably the only damn time we ever tried our hand at this whole "phone phreaking" thing. Hashtag wholesome childhood activities.
Now, this *was* rural Finland with comparatively shitty telephone exchanges (I can't remember when exactly they moved off from pulse dialing to DTMF, but that was *late* - I mean, I can actually remember a time when you had to specify ATDP instead of ATDT to call to BBSes), but apparently we were quite advanced in this particular regard.
Oh, and of course, I think that Finland always had a specific disconnect tone, so you don't actually get a dial tone if someone hangs up. Also American dial tones sound *weird*.
I believe the system as described (with dial-tone on the far end) was the one favored by General Telephone, later called GTE. Whereas MaBell (AT&T) used the system that was originally described. The statement about "Independent Telephone Companies" is false, as there are, and have been, several hundred working in each state since the early days. Some were purchased by GTE or AT&T, while others remained independent. However, there were only two companies making the switching systems in the end, the one favored by GTE (and built by them) and the one favored by AT&T ( and built by them). As a result, the independent companies had to purchase their switching equipment from one or the other. This is also why there are some special phone codes that work in certain areas, and not others, as until 911 was standardized, there were very few special services that operated the same on different networks.
Well, sort of - GTE's then-subsidiary Automatic Electric was their version of AT&T's Western Electric - except that AE was founded by Strowger himself to make early step switches. That's part of the reason WE developed the Panel (other reasons include capacity). But there were other manufacturers of telecom equipment - North Electric was one, best known for the CX line of switches with no moving parts (just relays... and some wibbly bits you just kind of have to see to understand what I mean) and some really awful phone sets. And Northern Electric, which used to be a WE subsidiary but after splitting off in the divestiture went on to become Nortel.
here in south africa we have all the latest phones and cellphones on the market, but the service providers also play a simular to dail tone when the call is hung up. in both landlines and cellphones
Hello Tom!
Very nice! Had to watch it twice to get the key part of the explanation, though: "The system doesn't know whether I am being hung up on, or just picked up the phone." I feel like this should have been highlighted in some way as it's THE crucial point of the entire video in my opinion.
I'm from socal, didn't know that wasn't a thing everywhere else. My grandparents still have a land line and it gets a dial tone(at least the last time I used it last year).
Well, the more you know :)
Man, now I want to visit that museum too! Keep showing us cool places Tom!
I was thinking about this the other day, many a time i have been left unaware that i accidentally pressed hang up or i was hung up on. I think we need the dial tone back