Now You See It, Now You Don't!
TellzAll's subject for October is the Rotary Dial Telephone
Today, many people have cellular phones. Some of these phones are so sophisticated that users can even download their e-mail or surf the Internet. Have you ever wondered what phones were like when your parents and grandparents were children?
Well, today, thanks to cellular phones , people can be in constant communication with their friends and family members. It does not matter if they are at home, stranded in the desert, or out playing in the park. Thanks to satellites and wireless phones, people can easily remain in touch with each other. When your parents and grandparents were children, wireless phones were practically unknown. Phones could not rely on satellites to send messages. Rather, phones used wires to transmit conversations. Because wires were necessary to use phones, people had to go to the phones, rather than take the phones with them.
For most of telephone history, phone users used a rotary dial telephone to call other people. (Image 2) Rotary phones had a round dial with ten numbers-zero to nine-on it. (Image 3) To call someone, the user would dial the appropriate numbers on the phone. Rotary dialing had existed since at least 1896, but it did not become commonplace on most phones until 1919. Rotary phones remained in use until at least the 1970s, when touchtone phones became common. Touchtone phones (Image 4) have a keypad, just like cellular phones today, with users simply pressing the appropriate numbers to call their friends and family members. Today, rotary phones are rarely used, and people who wish to still use them usually have to order special equipment from their phone company.
