Horrific picture - I looked at it and noted that I have used all the telephone models in the evolutionary history, except the 1896 model. Does it mean that I am older than the dinosaurs?
My kids say as much to me already, when we talk about phones, dial up Internet, and record players!
I was just talking this weekend about my first mobile phone: a bag phone from the mid eighties with a magnetic base antenna you could stick in the roof of the car when driving.
Being a doc in a rural area where you were the ER and hospital doc as well, it was a real blessing to be able to return calls without being tied to a land line. As I recall, I carried a pager and primarily used it to call back rather than trust the spotty coverage.
LOL, of course. Phones really have changed, and so have phone systems. My wife even had a party line when she was a girl. And remember the horrors of expensive long-distance calls?
Sometimes, with such poor cell coverage in some areas, I feel like it would be nice to connect my cell phone to a large antenna.
Oh, man–I remember an ad for 20 cents a minute. My kids love Dr Who, as well, but I don’t think they have ever seen a real, functioning phone booth. I remember keeping change in my pocket for them.
I’ve used them all. The rural area where I grew up was slow to get away from the crank phone with party line.
Or a weather balloon!
I saw one repurposed to a free book exchange.
As a kid, I lived some years in a rural area including a periphery with one of the last manual telephone exchanges in the country. If you wanted to call to someone in that area or out from the area, you called to the lady in the manual center and asked that she would connect you to the person or number you wanted to reach.
The lady in the manual switch had a technical possibility to listen to any of the calls. It was forbidden but the temptation seemed to be too strong sometimes. We learned to note the occasional small noise during the phone calls and used the expression ‘there seems to be birds on the telephone line’, which reminded to not speak confidential matters and at the same time, was a gentle message to the lady that we noted her unauthorized listening.
For some reason, the persons working at the manual telephone exchange and their close friends knew surprisingly well everything that happened in that area. No privacy.
That was the old-fashioned system but the system was not far from the switches in some companies - you call to the general number of the company and tell to whom you would like to talk. Less evolution than you could expect.
There’s another one where I live that’s been repurposed as a book exchange.
That was the plot for one of the episodes on “Little House on the Prairie”. My siblings and I still get a kick out of reminiscing about that show, especially since one of my little sisters was a spitting image of Nellie Olson.
The inventor of the automatic telephone exchange was an undertaker who noticed his business began to fall off when a new undertaker came to town whose wife was hired to man the switch board.
Vinyl is all trendy now. So all the cool kids need a record player.
I wonder when the Victrola will come back. Pre grid.
I guess my kids take after me–never have been cool! That is interesting to know! Thank you
I live in Amish country. Someone told me this week that at this time of the year, I need to look out for symptoms of the Amish flu–first you get a little horse, then a little buggy….
Hi @randy As a proud shiftless Mennonite myself I feel qualified to make fun of my own peeps 
(This from the Mennonite satire site “The Unger Review” for anyone who wants a few laughs at Mennonite expense.)
