campbell@redsox.bsw.com (Larry Campbell) (09/21/89)
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Eight years ago, I spent a few nights in a hotel in Gort, Ireland. Gort was
so small that ("How... small... was it?") the telephone number of the hotel
was 7. That's not a typo; the number was 7. (OK, they did have a second
line, and that number was 27.)
One night, I returned to the hotel about 1 AM and found it locked. The town
wasn't too small to have an all-night donut shop crowded with policemen;
they told me to go to the phone booth down the street and tell the operator
to ring up the hotel manager at home.
I went to the phone booth and encountered -- a hand-cranked telephone! With
no dial! Just like you see in silent movies! I had no idea how to work the
thing -- the instructions were completely obliterated by graffiti -- and it
took several experiments to discover that FIRST you turn the crank and THEN
you pick up the earpiece. (I was doing it backwards.)
A few minutes after the operator rang him up for me, the hotel manager drove
up, looking a bit rumpled, and let me in.
Do I win the prize for Most Ancient Telephone Equipment Actually Observed
in Regular Operation This Decade?
Larry Campbell The Boston Software Works, Inc.
campbell@bsw.com 120 Fulton Street
wjh12!redsox!campbell Boston, MA 02146
[Moderator's Note: And you sir, win a lifetime subscription to TELECOM Digest.
Lucky you! Thanks for a humorous close to this issue of the Digest. In
the Digest second edition for Friday, issued about 1:00 AM CDT, a detailed
discussion of telex, TWX, clock service and Western Union in general by
Larry Lippman and others. PT]