Dan Shapin <CS131B05@ccvax.fullerton.edu> (05/08/91)
How do you place a call with out dialing it using the "Hook tapping" method. Does it work on any phone?
"76012,300 Brad Hicks" <76012.300@compuserve.com> (06/20/91)
In TELECOM Digest vol 11, #471, Dan Shapin <CS131B05@ccvax.fullerton. edu> asked: > How do you place a call with out dialing it using the "Hook > tapping" method. Does it work on any phone? I used to do this to call out for pizza from the electronics lab at my college, which had a phone that was technically for inbound calls only. Pick up the handset, then lightly "tap" the switch-hook, the number of times equal to the first digit, as fast as you can while still making the button travel all the way down and all the way back up. Pause a half-second or so, then repeat for the second digit, and so forth. Zero=ten clicks. What you are doing is simulating the clicks of a pulse-dial phone. It takes patience, a steady hand, and a phone that has good "travel" on its switch-hook (most of the old ones, very few of the $5 cheapies), but it can be done. [Personal replies to jbhicks@mcimail.com, please; it's cheaper. Thanks!]
gypsy@silver.lcs.mit.edu (The Gypsy) (06/21/91)
"Hook Tapping" can be used in most (all?) areas to dial a telephone - by imitating a 'pulse-dial' telephone. You simply 'tap' down the 'hook' for a brief second (much less than a second actually) the number of times required to produce a 'digit.' Example ... if you wanted to dial the operator (0), you would simple 'tap' the 'hook' (to hang-up the phone temporarily) 10 times quickly. You can dial a normal telephone number in this way, stopping for a brief period in between each completed 'digit' of the number. This process, of course, does take a bit of practice to do, as the timing of the whole thing is highly important. While trying to dial a 0 for example, you might pause just a bit too long after 5 'taps' - resulting in the telephone company believing that you dialed 5 5 - instead of 0 (10 clicks). To my knowledge, it works anywhere that you could use a normal, 'old,' pulse-dial telephone (which is pretty much anywhere). The Gypsy [gypsy@silver.lcs.mit.edu (18.52.0.230)]
David Schanen <mtv@milton.u.washington.edu> (06/21/91)
Heheh, I first tried this when I was 10 or 11 yrs old. I saw someone do it on TV and tried it once and I was magically connected to someone in another state! After a half a dozen or so random connections around the country, and one overseas, the magic wore off as I realized what was going on and started trying to think of ways to explain the inevitable phone bill to my parents. I did learn a valuable skill however, as I have found several touch tone sets with broken tone banks. Most people are amazed to see it work. :) Dave Inet: mtv@milton.u.washington.edu * 8kyu * UUNET: ...uunet!uw-beaver!u!mtv
mnc@css.itd.umich.edu (Miguel Cruz) (06/22/91)
In article <telecom11.471.10@eecs.nwu.edu> Dan Shapin <CS131B05@ccvax. fullerton.edu> writes: > How do you place a call with out dialing it using the "Hook tapping" > method. Does it work on any phone? This works on phones that don't have timed switchhooks. I've gotten pretty good at it, but it's by and large a useless skill. Listen to a rotary phone dialing and take note of the timing. Go back in your mind to music class in school and pretend you have to remember the tempo. Obviously it doesn't work on digital phones. (This is the only newsgroup where I would feel paranoid enough to include that). peace
FLINTON@eagle.wesleyan.edu (Fred E.J. Linton) (06/23/91)
In <telecom11.472.1@eecs.nwu.edu> gypsy@silver.lcs.mit.edu (The Gypsy) writes: > "Hook Tapping" can be used in most (all?) areas to dial a telephone - > by imitating a 'pulse-dial' telephone. You simply 'tap' down the > 'hook' for a brief second (much less than a second actually) the > number of times required to produce a 'digit.' Knowing this quaint fact helped rescue a musical group I once belonged to when it found itself locked within the building where it had just finished giving a performance -- we found a telephone, of the rotary persuasion, with a padlocked dial, and were forced to dial out for help by hook-tapping. As you need to hook-tap at the rate of about 0.1 sec per tap for each digit, a certain amount of technique must be developed -- two coordinated hands worked best for our drummer, the only one to succeed at this curious game. Fred <flinton@eagle.Wesleyan.EDU> or <fejlinton@{att|mci}mail.com>
Dennis Blyth <dblyth@oatseu.daytonoh.ncr.com> (06/24/91)
Michigan State University, 1968 [Previous writer suggested dialing using switch hook to tap out the digits.] I would not recommend your method, because it is *likely* to generate trouble tickets at the CO. (or at least it would have 23 years ago!) I learned that the hard way. In 1968 at Michigan State University I was Program Director of our campus radio station, and we ran a contest called 'civil war week-end' wherein the object was to award 'points' to the dormitory with the *most* correct calls/answers to our questions about rock 'n roll oldies. We generated thousands of phone calls in a very short time. Our phone number was 5-6111 (Centrex), specially set up for the week-end contest. It over-flowed to 6112, 6113, and 6114. Students quickly learned that it was faster to dial the 5 and 6 normally, then 'bat the switch hook' for the last three digits. About 45 minutes into the contest, I received a ring on one of our normal business lines. I thought it strange, because we had 'busied out' the other lines by calling from one line to another, picking it up, and putting it on hold. It was the technician at our local CO, who threatened to take us off the air if we did not cease and desist with our contest. I asked him how he knew about it and he said he had a pile of trouble tickets for 56111 and that he learned it was a line just installed the day before for our station. (Since we relied on MBT to carry our signal to our transmitter, his threat was credible, and we immediately ceased the contest, citing 'technical difficulties'.) I said I had a hard time believing it was our station that was generating the volume of calls. He said they had not had so many calls since the day President Kennedy was shot. He invited me to the CO to see. When I arrived, we ran the contest for three minutes, and the noise from the equipment was deafening. He explained that one of the campus exchanges was 'electronic' and the other was not. In about 45 minutes, he had about 100 'punch card' trouble tickets, which was automatically generated by the 'electronic' equipment. He said each time somebody 'dialed' using the hook, that a ticket was created. We agreed to run the contest for only three minutes out of every ten minutes for the rest of the week-end. During the contest times, on one exchange there was a delay of 30 seconds before one could get a dial tone, and a 20 second delay on the other. The MBT technician said the equipment would normally give 20 people per second a dial tone per exchange. I quickly learned 'the power of the mass media'. BTW, the technician said that if he had not been able to locate the source of the trouble, that in the next 15 minutes he would have had to call a VP of MBT and ask permission to 'pull the plug' on all service but service set up for emergencies, doctors, civil defense, police, hospitals, etc. I know this is 'an oldie' but hopefully, it is a 'goodie' that has some relevance to your topic. Thanks for allowing me this opportunity to reminisce.
bud@uunet.uu.net> (06/25/91)
In article <telecom11.479.6@eecs.nwu.edu> mnc@css.itd.umich.edu (Miguel Cruz) writes: > In article <telecom11.471.10@eecs.nwu.edu> Dan Shapin <CS131B05@ccvax. > fullerton.edu> writes: >> How do you place a call with out dialing it using the "Hook tapping" >> method. Does it work on any phone? > This works on phones that don't have timed switchhooks. ^^^^^ Or phones that have mercury switches on the hook-switch. I've seen this on pay-phones to prevent some rather ingenious fraud schemes that I won't detail :-). Bud Couch - ADC/Kentrox If my employer only knew... standard BS applies