It made it interesting when they started with a name and not a number

Comments

• DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Now, you’re talking old. I think you’d need to be 70+ to remember this.

  Kids today: “If you remember making a mix tape, you’re old.”

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  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Kids today probably think your old if you burned your own CDs

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    • kate@lemmy.uhhoh.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      some of the younger people in my gaming group maybe 16-20yo don’t know the difference between a CD and DVD and blu-ray and use the term CD to refer to all 3

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• edinbruh@feddit.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  My grandma was from a richer family (that lost everything before she married grandpa). Her phone number was <city code> 2.

  That is because <city code> 1 was the phone number of the city hall, and no one else could afford a phone.

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• BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Mine started with ST5, which you had to translate into the number, which was 785. Even as a kid, I knew it was weird. Nobody could ever explain that old tradition of having the letters. Don’t give me a phone number with a combination of letters and numbers, just give me the numbers.

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  • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It was a holdover from when you had to make a verbal request to the telephone operator to connect a call, rather than use a dial. Kind of odd that nobody could explain it.

    Wikipedia Link

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    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Kind of odd that nobody could explain it.

      Did you read the Wikipedia entry you linked? The explanation is incredibly convoluted. No wonder nobody can explain it. I just read it, and I couldn’t explain it to someone. It seems like the reasons were logical when it started, but when I had that number in the 60s, making a call was essentially the same as today (except no push buttons), and there was no reason to keep up with those two letters at the beginning. It was just a holdover from the olden days, like Daylight Savings time. We tend to be reluctant to give up old traditions, no matter how pointless they are.

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• affenlehrer@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  My parents still have a 4 digit number, we also had one until the cable company f’ed up about a year or two ago

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• AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I hooked up an old rotary phone to our landline when I was young and was very sad that dialing 0 did not connect me to an operator

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• DaMonsterKnees@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Translyvania 6-5 ew ew ew.

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• homes@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  oh, yes, 5 digit dialing. Now, you’re old if you remember 7 digit dialing.

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  • waggz@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I had to dial 10 to reach schoolmates in the neighboring town and it was long distance charges!!

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• comador@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Party Lines…

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• Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  At least in my school, the Simpson’s started us spelling phone numbers with letters again in the 90s. We were “Yuka 2…”

  That doesn’t make me not old though.

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