12 replies to this topic

[SloopJohnB]

Ok I know most of the members here are old and should be able to remember.......

 

[Vorpal Blade]

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They would have been well buggered with this one then...not a number in sight. 

We had one of these on our farm. There were 7 other people that shared the same number, ours was 123U, the property next door was 123 S and the ring tone was the morse code for the suffix. Got to learn morse at an early age. And of course everyone heard all the conversations in the area and when you weren't picking up and listening to the neighbours goss the operator surely was. 

 

[erice]

a party line

 

our number along a country road in pukekohe was M, 2 long rings

 

so < 26 households "per party line"

 

at the end of the road was a local woman sitting on a stool in a switchboard room

 

possibly knitting between calls

 

she was the "operator" who would connect us to the world outside our line

 

i can't remember that we needed to use the dynamo on the phone to make a call

 

we had the modern accessory

 

the telephone battery(cell), about the size of a litre juice pack/milk bottle

 

 

https://www.nola.com...ator_recal.html

 

The first telephones were hard enough to use without the added harassment of the teenage boys who had been used as telephone operators – after all, they’d been telegraph operators from the beginning. But they weren’t suited for actually talking to real people. They were impatient, they liked to play jokes, and they swore. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Emma Nutt was hired,

 

she was patient and savvy, her voice cultured and soothing, according to the New England Historical Society. The customer response to her voice and patience was overwhelmingly positive, so boys were soon replaced by women.

[harrytom]

Stayed on a farm that was on the party line,phone rang went to answer it and was told,not our ring,had to ask wtf they were talking about,tried to make a call and gave up as phone always seemed to have someone it. Not that long ago either early 80s

[erice]

yeah, before you could make a call on the 1 line down your road

 

to someone else living on it or to the operator for "an outside line"

 

you had to make sure no one else was "on the line"

 

so you picked up and listened

 

if you heard the 'dial tone' you dialed

 

but if you heard a conversation, someone else was using the line

 

so you'd have to wait

 

and they'd hear the click as someone came on to the line and then went off

 

prompting them to stop nattering and end their call

 

sometimes when an outside call came in, the operator would interrupt the conversation to say

 

"an outside call has come in, could you please finish your conversation" 

[SloopJohnB]

yeap we where 6299D on the Howick exchange.

[cj!]

yeap we where 6299D on the Howick exchange.

 

I still remember our Howick number too. Used to have an old lady a few doors down who always listened in to everyone's conversations on the party line.

[AJ Oliver]

 Used to have an old lady a few doors down who always listened in to everyone's conversations on the party line. 

 

It was likely us at NSA and the Five Eyes - got some right juicy stuff on ya too !!

[Chrisc]

My folks were farming on Te Atatu Road - 493R on the Te Atatu exchange. And if anyone was eavesdropping the best they would have got was my mum's recipe for her prize winning lamingtons.

[Knot Me... maybe]

Oh, I do love a good lamington.