Landline Tricks Kids Today Will Have No Idea About Whatsoever

We had a lot of hacks for using those old fashioned telephones.

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).

Via/ State Archives of Florida

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!

Via/ State Archives of Florida

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.

Via/ Wiki Commons

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!

Via/ State Archives of Florida

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.

Via/ Flickr
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