Taking callers during contests; 15 sec to allow Telco to drop line?

[TomZ]

Haw, Another modern digital headache. Bring back crossbar and true DC signaling.

Mabel could pull them plugs out of the switch panel faster than that!

The last town near Dodge City to have a ring-down system was controlled by a lady named Crystal.

The local Bell operators hated pushing station-to-station calls to her because she would ring the place where the person was; thereby eliminating any person-to-person needs.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

My ears still ring! I could have brought all kind of people down,doctors,lawyers,politicians,etc.And phone sex was poplar back then,too.Mercy if only the public knew what was going on!! Kinda gives Reach Out and Touch a different meaning!!

Those 49mhz analog cordless phones were fun too. My father in law lived in the middle of a town of 5000 & had an outdoor antenna on his scanner. The stories he told....

 

[nmoore6676]

When I was a junior high teen living in Springfield, Ohio we had a local station that did a call in for dedications show Saturday afternoons aimed our age group. Back in those days the main switch was the old mechanical cross bar system and the volume of calls would result in a city wide party line. Hundreds of horny teen aged boys connected on a conference call with girls all over, a good time for all until Ma Bell shut down the fun and no more dedications were taken unless they were mailed in on post cards.

 

[Tom Wells]

When I was a junior high teen living in Springfield, Ohio we had a local station that did a call in for dedications show Saturday afternoons aimed our age group. Back in those days the main switch was the old mechanical cross bar system and the volume of calls would result in a city wide party line. Hundreds of horny teen aged boys connected on a conference call with girls all over, a good time for all until Ma Bell shut down the fun and no more dedications were taken unless they were mailed in on post cards.

That's a beautiful picture. Thanks for bringing it in hot steamy weather. Must have been way cool.

 

[mbrg]

Thanks all; lots of good stories and advice. I'm just old enuf to remember party lines and I do have a anecdote from the late 70's from my first station. We had a church using a local loop on Sundays and I'd always bring it up in cue to check their feed. One particular day the line was noisy with crosstalk; various dialtones and pulse sounds of calls being made. At the end of one series of "clicks" I heard the man's voice who was placing the call; our high school music teacher; well-liked at school, a pillar of the community. He was calling a female student at 9:15 on a Sunday morning and I could only hear his side of the connection "Hi (girls name), this is Mr (his name). How are you this morning?....(do I keep listening?....for now)....I wanted to call to remind you of choir practice after church this morning"

Thats all.

Many years later I was running sound at a 9/11 Memorial and he sang "Try To Remember (a time in September)". He sang it solo, and had the crowd in tears, me too.



The disposition of our original issue; Our Lucent dealer/technician says Telco should be able to reduce that "disconnect" time, but AT&T says they can't.

We're wondering about the VOIP services for the studio lines now...