It seems most people these days only have a cell phone and probably will never again have a landline if they can help it. Even before the smart phone era, most folks already had their own dedicated landline (instead of party lines) and had moved on from rotary phones, but even so, there were still a lot of things we learned about maximizing our phone time back then. In the days when you actually had to physically “hang up” a phone, there were quite a few tricks that we used to our advantage! These 9 telephone hacks saved us time and money back in the day, besides which some of them were really pretty fun!
9) Calling the Operator
Today everyone uses the internet to find numbers and for troubleshooting on their phones, but back in the day we called the operator for any question about any phone number at all. They were there to help, and sometimes you could even have a chat with them!
8) Before Caller ID
Back in the day dialing *69 could help you figure out who had just called you. This was long before caller ID, but was pretty useful if you didn’t have an answering machine (or if you had been prank called).
7) Masking Your Number
And if you were the prank caller, you might have dialed *67 before dialing out to keep your number from being traceable via callback (or caller ID once that feature had been invented). This was also helpful if you just didn’t want someone to call you back, say if you were at a friend’s house or at work but didn’t want that particular line to be called back.
6) Nights and Weekends
Who else remembers waiting until the evening to make a long distance call because the rates were cheaper? It wad the same for weekends. There were a few of these types of calling plans when cell phones first came out, but there is almost no one who pays extra for domestic long-distance calls these days. But, there was a time when making a long-distance call was a big deal and a big expense!
5) Collect Messages
If you were short on cash but simply wanted to get a message through, you could call the operator in order to make a collect call. Once you had the operator, you’d say your message as the name to give the other party. Once they had “rejected” the call, you knew that they would have heard your message from the operator (who always knew what you were doing but didn’t seem to mind).
4) Beep Beep Lines
Whether you called them jam lines or beep beep lines, these were interesting places to talk to folks. People would talk in between the beeps or pulses of the busy signal because of course, the line was already engaged. Thing is, you’d be talking to strangers on what was a clandestine “line” by each calling into the same number.
As soon as the phone company found out about one of these busy lines they’d shut it down, but usually not before all the local kids had had a chance to call in and flirt with strangers over the phone. And if you were really daring? You might even agree to meet in person!
3) Info Calls
Before cable TV and the 24 hours news cycle, before the Weather Channel, and long before smart phones, if you wondered what the time and temperature were, but didn’t have a clock or thermometer handy, you called the weather line to get the time and temp. This was a handy reference to have, even if today it sounds like something from a completely different world.
2) Hook Flash
You could use the hook buttons on the receiver cradle to summon an operator, 411, or to signal to the switchboard operator that you’d like to connect 3 lines at the same time for multi-line phone call.
It’s strange to think about the physicality of the old fashioned telephones and how much we used those hooks!
1) Listening In
Listening in on party lines or even on the lines in your own home if you had more than one phone could be a lucrative way to find out people’s secrets. You had to be very quiet though! If you even so much as breathed too loudly the other parties would hear you and zip their lips.
