Numm-ber Plee-ease

Egorr: …The telephone had NO dial… you had to pick up the handset and ask for the Operator to connect you!…

When I was a wee tad, I would pick up the receiver on our dial-less deskset, wait for the operator to say, "Num-ber plee-ease?" I'd speak clearly (as we were taught in those AT&T phone etiquette films) my friend's number, which was easy for me because it was "two, four, six." She'd say thank you and connect me to Tommy's house.

So, I always tell the young'n's, we had voice-activated dialing 'way back then. Everything since has been a step back. :D

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While I'm rambling phone-tically, I figure the biggest improvement in phone technology over the decades has been (drumroll) replacing the dial with buttons. Why? Well, that circular impression on your index finger if you dialed a lot of calls, for one thing. But mostly…

There's an emergency (it's1950s), who do you call? Dial "Operator." And as seconds count, you dial whirr -- all the way around the dial, wait for it to clickety-click back. Or, later, it's now 911 - so you dial the 9, almost as long to dial as the "O" -- why couldn't they just make 0 the first dial position, or later make emergency = 111? Well, moot now. All buttons are created equal.