I grew up with rotary phones... They really are not something to fetishize.I can close my eyes and still feel the plastic cutting into my index finger after repeatedly mis-dialing a long distance number, or having to redial a few times because the phone was busy. (Good luck if you were at a payphone.) You'd try to dial faster, but you'd always have to wait for the dial to return sooo slooowly... It took literally 15-30 seconds to dial a number. Then there was the yelling at someone to get off the line when they picked up and started dialing right away (clackada-clackada-clackada). Oof.
Yeah, there are reasons rotary phones are gone for good, and it's not just because of touch tones. The "good ol' days" sucked and always will, no matter which generation is trying to claim otherwise, don't listen to anyone who tells you differently.
5/1/2026
at
1:44:13 PM
My first phone in the early 80s was a hand-cranked magneto phone like this: https://images.okr.ro/serve/product/572e8fdd848db2d3b02d36d2...Connected by 12Km of telephone wire to a manual switchboard where an operator would pick my call and connect wires for local or long distance: https://alexandrone.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02...
Yes, in the early 80s, Romania was still using 1950s technology. And with only 3 telephones in the village, it was a big deal to have one.
Then at the end of the 80s moved to a nearby town and was amazed at how much more convenient a rotary dial phone is.
by MichaelRo
5/1/2026
at
10:15:16 PM
My ex-wife grew up in a small town in 1970s Francoist Spain, so I've heard these types of stories before. (Though she didn't have to crank her phone!!)She actually had two phone lines in her house: One for employees of Repsol - the national oil company - which didn't have a dial and used a central operator, and another with a dial to make regular calls. It created a sort of 1970s "blue bubble" effect because the company line was free to use. Friends whose family also worked for the company were sort of privileged as a result.
Visiting my kid's grandparents in the late 2000s was a blast from the past as they still had the same pink phone in the living room they had had since forever (it may have even been a rotary phone, I can't remember). My son at the time was honestly perplexed at the whole idea of a landline.
by russellbeattie
5/2/2026
at
9:33:37 AM
>> Friends whose family also worked for the company were sort of privileged as a result.Well to tell the full story, my father was an employee of the Agricultural Production Cooperative (CAP - Cooperativa Agricola de Productie - in Romanian), the national company who owned the land (forcibly nationalized in the 50s) and grew food. No individual would have been able to afford a private telephone line in the village, there were two of them, one to CAP one to the Post office. While it was possible to go to the post office and pay to make calls, it was more awkward getting them. So we hooked a phone to CAP's line, meaning we shared the calls with it's office, phone rang both at out home and in the office and everytime we made a call, someone in the office could pick up the phone and listen (and we could do the same with them). And of course not every employee of the company was allowed to hook up a personal phone to the company line ;)
by MichaelRo
5/1/2026
at
3:00:54 PM
And with the unappreciated feature that the Securitate's people listening in could always be counted on to be available for consult in case you forgot a detail discussed in a call...
by jacquesm
