1565
submitted 5 months ago by sag@lemm.ee to c/memes@lemmy.world
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] mPony@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

when I was wee we only needed to use 5 digits for many years. The system would assume the first digit you dialed was the final digit of the initial group. When they switched us to the full 7 digits people acted SO annoyed: who's got that kind of time when you're using a rotary phone?

[-] lars 8 points 5 months ago

This was around sporadically in the US Great Plains until maybe the 1990s. And calling outside your city but within the same area code was an eight-digit call:

1 + seven-digit local phone number

I still can’t quite believe it, especially when my city added a 6th area code a few years back.

[-] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

That's wild. We did have an old antique rotary phone though! My sister and I would play with it like a toy unplugged but it was also perfectly functional. You just had to be fast because it seemed like in later years the 'timeout' between dialing numbers had gotten shorter. You'd have to dial two 9's in a row and before you could finish the second 9, you'd get some kind of "I'm sorry, the number you have reached is not available" message.

this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
1565 points (98.0% liked)

memes

9607 readers
3024 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS