I'd like to make a long-distance call...

Ah, but where's the dialing pencil?

I don't remember that flaired bottom style wall phone.

I thought the woman was either Dinah Shore or Teri Garr.

Does anyone here remember having to request a long distance call and the operator would call you back when it was arranged?

R2, me either. Looks super fancy!

R4, no hun. Just how old are you?

It happened all the time in The Talented Mr Ripley novel.

Or you could go to the telephone office and wait in a little booth for your call to be arranged.

We're all connected! New York Telephone!

I remember my grandparents arranging a long distance call, trans-Atlantic. It took all day to arrange. The operator phoned back several times during the day for some reason, perhaps to provide an update on progress although that sounds like excessively good customer service.

R9 and then when the call finally connected you spent half the time saying, “Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you.” Loved listening to my parents speak to their families back in the “old world.”

R4 I once interrupted a marathon nail-filing session convened by the operators off the lobby of the Olympiskaya Hotel (run by Lufthansa, so you'd think they'd be a bit more efficient) in Moscow to find out why the call to NYC I'd booked at 9 am hadn't been put through by 3 in the afternoon. By which time, of course, it was 10 at night in NYC. I later learned that there were only about 150 international lines available for international calls out of Moscow (a city of 9 million people) in 1990.

Likewise I remember my parents trying to call me from Rome in 1978 to tell me they'd had an audience with Pope John Paul 1 that afternoon - he was the guy who lasted a month. By the time the operators got a call through it was the next morning in the States and the Pope had died the night before. When she'd tell the story, my mother always asked, "Do you think it was something I said?"

I don't remember needing an operator to make a long distance call, but I do remember how incredibly expensive it was.

I grew up in the 70s and the only thing different about phones then was they had rotary dials and attached to the wall. Don't remember calling the operator for long distance. What year was that?

Same here R12.

Our rotary dial phones were not attached to the walls. They sat on flat surfaces.

R13 Until area codes and direct dialing were introduced in 1951. And then only between eleven cities in the US and only to or from the parts of those area codes that had the proper switching equipment:

617: Boston, Massachusetts

312: Chicago, Illinois

216: Cleveland, Ohio

313: Detroit, Michigan

414: Milwaukee, Wisconsin

415: Oakland, California

215: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

412: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

401: Providence, Rhode Island

916: Sacramento, California

318: San Francisco

Direct dialing didn't come into widespread use in the US until the early to mid 1960's depending on where you lived. One reason was that "person-to-person" (that is, operator assisted) calls were to a specific person, not anyone who answered the phone. If you called them yourself and they weren't home, you got charged. If the operator called and they weren't there to take the call, you weren't charged. If someone else answered the call you dialed yourself, you paid for it.

It mattered because relatively speaking, calls then were expensive. In 1950, a three-minute call (the minimum for which you were charged) was $3.70, equal to about $40 today. In 1950, the average salary in the US was about $2600 a year, or a bit more than $50 a week.

If those prices are accurate R15 it is amazing that the phone ever caught on as a domestic appliance.

[quote] 318: San Francisco

San Francisco has always been 415, hasn’t it? 318 is in Louisiana. 831 is the area code for the northern Central Coast, including Santa Cruz, Salinas, Monterey.

Good luck if you got Ernestine.

I'm sorry, but GRanite 4497 is busy. I will try that number for you later.

Growing up in the late 60's my high school covered the eastern third of the county, half the students in my class and most of my good friends were long distance because local was just my small city of 5,000.

If you phone Windsor from Detroit is that charged at international rates?

[QUOTE] San Francisco has always been 415, hasn’t it? 318 is in Louisiana

R17 Now you tell me!

THOSE were the days! A long-distance call was GLAMOROUS....almost immoral.

Is that what's called a Trunk Call?

Everyone talked quickly because it was long distance and every second counted! It was like you were talking to an astronaut calling from the moon.

[quote] If you phone Windsor from Detroit is that charged at international rates?

Normally, but most people have plans of unlimited calling between the US and Canada these days.

R17: San Francisco required the special code 318 for temporary routing requirements. San Francisco and Oakland each had their own separate toll-switches, so calls had to be routed accordingly depending on the final destination. As the telephone equipment used at the time could only handle three-digit translation, the temporary use of area code 318 was required to distinguish between the two areas. area code 318 was temporarily used to specify San Francisco and areas north of the Golden Gate, while calls with destinations in Oakland and the East Bay continued to use area code 415. When the electromechanical card-translator box became available sometime during 1952–53, six-digit translation became possible and the use of area code 318 was no longer required. Area code 318 was reclaimed for future use and the entire San Francisco Bay Area returned to using area code 415.

R27 Does that address OP? Mmmn, not sure.

I have a pan like that lady is using. It ain’t great.

R28 No, it doesn't. Which is why I'm reaching out to Susanswerphone. Not only will they put me through to west LA, but they'll also nab me a job, inheritance, and marriage proposal while I wait.

I forgot about that movie! Thanks OP r30

Crawford can't win against Ernestine.

Thanks r27. Your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject is impressive.

At least those people had inside phones.

R33 While my ability to cut and paste from Wikipedia may be impressive, my knowledge of telephone technology is not.

Still, and more interestingly, Los Angeles was not among the first US cities to offer Direct Distance Dialing as it was then known. Callers in Providence and Sacramento were apparently more of a priority for the Bell System.

Thus - in 1951 at least - OP's wall-phone woman would have had to ask the operator in order to get in touch with her party in West LA.

There's that ILL episode where Lucy places a transatlantic call from Florence, Italy to NYC to wish Little Ricky a happy birthday. It takes all day, and several trips up and down the stairs, for the call to be put through. When I was a little kid in the '70s, I though it took that long to make long distance calls.

For R1

Beechwood 45789, please.

Imagine placing an intergalactic call, like the poor bitch in this song.

There was a telephone pole next to our garage, right on the alley next to our house. One day, my brother and I were outside playing and the GTE workman showed up and climbed the pole. We stood in awe as he pulled out a handset and plugged it in somewhere up there and made a phone call!

The next day, we took the extension phone from the upstairs hallway and climbed the telephone pole. Lo and behold, there was a jack on the top of a box. We plugged in the phone, lifted the receiver, and dialed the operator. We had no idea whom we could call, so we asked the operator to connect us to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (newspaper). A few seconds later, somebody answered "Plain Dealer."

We freaked out, fearing that Dad would see a long distance call on the phone bill, so we scrambled down the pole. And waited. And waited. No call appeared on the bill for over a month, so we were emboldened to try it again. For the next few years, we would occasionally climb the telephone pole with a phone and make long distance calls. Just because we could.

Do people even get the Jimmy Webb reference? Somehow I think the Jackie DeShannon cover of The Girl's Song is more appropriate for OP's photo.

r36 I believe they were in Rome, not Florence.

r38 is either young or has a bad memory. Old phone numbers were written like this: BEechwood 4-5789 (or BE4-5789.)

Dial ...

Anyone remember phone bills from your dorm room? If you didn’t pay those, no diploma for you. I worked in the library and got their WATS (wide area telephone service) to call home- which means it was free. It was a big deal. Looking back, that seems so ridiculous.

Sorry, wrong number . . .

Some additional info to round out and fill in some of what R15 said.

I remember when my parents would call the operator to get connected to a call. You could ask for a phone number, then the operator would ask if you wanted to be connected. I also remember dialing a number to get the current time. It was invaluable when the power went out.

R47 how did the phone work without power?

^^ Power for phones was on a separate circuit that ran through the phone line and had nothing to do with the power in your house

Remember Directory Assistance? You would call a special operator to get a phone number. Life before the internet was like the dark ages

Ah, but OP, tell us:

Why were you so unkind?

Do you hope he's still on that line?

Will you make it up to him?

If he hasn't changed his number?

If he hasn't changed his mind?

R48 - you called when the power came back on, Einstein.

R51: R49 says you're wrong, so there.

R49 is correct. I lived in Los Angeles pre-cell phone. After an earthquake made the power go out landline phones still worked. You were supposed to stay off the phone though in order to avoid overloading the circuits.

Operator - thank you for your time, you've been so much more than kind.

Who did that "I'll lose my di-em" sketch?

I’ve never seen that model of wall phone. Maybe this photo is from outside the United States. Back in the day some cities had GTE rather than Bell for the local phone company. My grandma lived in one and all of the phones were different, and uglier, than the Bell models. But I’ve never seen this one before.

Our semi-rural area had Alltel (we may have been completely an independent local in the 70s). But I eventually lived in a GTE city.

Old-school landline phones that were just connected to the copper wire phone lines (either with a fixed connection or a modular plug) worked when there was no power, but when deregulation came about and people started buying fancier phones that required a connection to the electrical outlet--guess what? They didn't work when the power died.

I do seem to recall the old landline worked with no power.