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The Old Test


Eric
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1 hour ago, Rellik said:

My mom has acouple of these.  Two weeks ago, I unplugged it to pack for the move.  She had to use other modern phones to call out, but her dial phone rang and worked for incoming calls.  If you have one, plug it in and watch your friends jump when it rings.  Do a Matrix type response.  

She also has a few candlesticks.  

I have one I purchased for my blind MIL that had a Hard of Hearing function on it.  I suspect it was one of the first offered.

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My mom has acouple of these.  Two weeks ago, I unplugged it to pack for the move.  She had to use other modern phones to call out, but her dial phone rang and worked for incoming calls.  If you have one, plug it in and watch your friends jump when it rings.  Do a Matrix type response.  
She also has a few candlesticks.  

I thought the telephone system was required to maintain compatibility with the electro-mechanical pulse dialers.


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Our first Telephone:
telephonenodial.jpg

And probably on a party line where ring patterns identified the intended recipient (and all others picked up VERY quietly). And you asked the operator to connect you with the intended recipient. And the operator worked at one of these:
75b527d4e33f81fc0fe90d3f8fb4e4eb.jpg


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15 minutes ago, railfancwb said:


High ceilings were a most necessary part of the transom window experience.


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Yep. High ceilings helped keep a greater volume of the room’s heat up above you and transom windows, along with the exterior windows, helped a building breathe, expelling excessive heat, even when the room doors were closed. 

Who remembers those huge windows in schools? You had the lower window that could be opened upward and the upper windows that could be lowered to open. Each class had a pole with the brass fitting on the end to unlatch and raise & lower the upper windows. With the windows open, including the transom windows, the building did a pretty fair job of keeping the heat in check on warm days. I think I was in fifth grade when I went to my first school with central AC. 

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75d4204d9d71560ceaebe9fa828058cd.jpg

For awhile when I smoked cigarettes, I thought it was cool to light them one handed with book matches of this design.

If in the process one set the entire book aflame, things suddenly became exciting.

That game ended when the books were redesigned to put the striker strip on the back side.


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Yep. High ceilings helped keep a greater volume of the room’s heat up above you and transom windows, along with the exterior windows, helped a building breathe, expelling excessive heat, even when the room doors were closed. 
Who remembers those huge windows in schools? You had the lower window that could be opened upward and the upper windows that could be lowered to open. Each class had a pole with the brass fitting on the end to unlatch and raise & lower the upper windows. With the windows open, including the transom windows, the building did a pretty fair job of keeping the heat in check on warm days. I think I was in fifth grade when I went to my first school with central AC. 

Air conditioning of schools, especially in the south, destroyed the long summer break.


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31 minutes ago, railfancwb said:


And probably on a party line where ring patterns identified the intended recipient (and all others picked up VERY quietly). And you asked the operator to connect you with the intended recipient. And the operator worked at one of these:
75b527d4e33f81fc0fe90d3f8fb4e4eb.jpg


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As a young lad of questionable ethics, I soon found that I could hook a surplus carbon microphone in series with a pair of earphones and make calls from the bathroom where the phone line came into the house.

Yes.  It was puzzling just how you would pick up the phone and the switch would make "quietly".  But  they tried.

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3 minutes ago, janice6 said:

I read that the lines would form when the rumor was that they had something to sell, but nobody was sure what!

Yes. That's true. Because one could trade something for food later on. Or some other item that was needed. My Mom would buy the shoes that were 5 sizes too big for me, hoping that she will be able to trade with someone for the right size. That's because delivery to the store was limited to one size only at the time. To get a pair, she needed a special, government issued coupon and stood outside in the line for 5-6 hours.

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