I am on the phone!

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TheGreenGoblin
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I am on the phone!

#1 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 7:14 am

Well done the Royal Army Educational Corps (RAEC)!
A gold telephone saved from a skip has returned to the art deco bedroom for which it was commissioned eight decades ago by the socialite Virginia Courtauld.

English Heritage on Friday announced that it had been given a telephone that spoke volumes about the glamorous, over-the-top lifestyle of the inhabitants of Eltham Palace in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south London.

Courtauld and her husband, Stephen, were a millionaire couple who, in 1933, alighted on a medieval palace in Eltham and saw it as the perfect doer-upper that was both semi-rural and in easy reach of central London.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... -courtauld

I suppose the so called landline telephone will soon go the way of the dodo, much like middle aged fossils like me. One of my younger colleagues was teasing me about the fact that I had an old style telephone at all in this era of fashionable "tech" must haves such as iPhones and the latest Android wonder. Given this prejudice I give full credit to the ex RAEC member who "saw gold in them thar phones" and had the nous to save this heirloom for posterity!

The Courtaulds were an interesting family too!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_ ... collector)
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Re: I am on the phone!

#2 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:03 am

When I started my 1st civilian job, in 1965, I was 'on call' and my employer paid for a phone to be installed at our home.

When SM saw the GPO choices she demanded a white one, as she considered this to be the height of Hollywood chic.
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Re: I am on the phone!

#3 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:08 am

ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:03 am
When I started my 1st civilian job, in 1965, I was 'on call' and my employer paid for a phone to be installed at our home.

When SM saw the GPO choices she demanded a white one, as she considered this to be the height of Hollywood chic.

I loved the classic old phone sound... (yes, I know this is a very sad post)... =))

Pulse dialing rules Ok!

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Re: I am on the phone!

#4 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:28 am

Useless piece of trivia.

My home town of Redcar, was one of the last places in the UK to get dial phones.

As a result, it was one of the first to get STD. (For the none UK people, that isn't Sexually Transmitted Disease. It is Subscriber Trunk Dialing, what is called DDD in the USA)
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Re: I am on the phone!

#5 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:46 am

Don't get me going on DTMF!

How nerdy is this. Wonderful.... :-bd



Pi generator....
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Re: I am on the phone!

#6 Post by Ex-Ascot » Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:22 am

Remember these? Had one for years. Only chucked it out when we left the UK.
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Re: I am on the phone!

#7 Post by G-CPTN » Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:44 pm

How does the telephone system cope with tone dialling as well as old-fashioned dial telephones (I presume that they still work?)?

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Re: I am on the phone!

#8 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:27 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:46 am
Don't get me going on DTMF!

How nerdy is this. Wonderful.... :-bd
Aver get involved with programming Auto Call Units?

I did ~X(
Twice ~X( ~X(
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Re: I am on the phone!

#9 Post by G-CPTN » Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:57 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 7:14 am
A gold telephone saved from a skip has returned to the art deco bedroom for which it was commissioned eight decades ago by the socialite Virginia Courtauld.

English Heritage on Friday announced that it had been given a telephone that spoke volumes about the glamorous, over-the-top lifestyle of the inhabitants of Eltham Palace in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south London.

Courtauld and her husband, Stephen, were a millionaire couple who, in 1933, alighted on a medieval palace in Eltham and saw it as the perfect doer-upper that was both semi-rural and in easy reach of central London.
The Courtaulds were an interesting family too![/quote]

Eltham Palace

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Re: I am on the phone!

#10 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:02 pm

ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:27 pm
TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:46 am
Don't get me going on DTMF!

How nerdy is this. Wonderful.... :-bd
Aver get involved with programming Auto Call Units?

I did ~X(
Twice ~X( ~X(
ACU's? Oh yes! ;)))

Which subject segues into UART's, modems, DTE, switched networks and similar madness...
Though you remain
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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

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Re: I am on the phone!

#11 Post by llondel » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:26 pm

G-CPTN wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:44 pm
How does the telephone system cope with tone dialling as well as old-fashioned dial telephones (I presume that they still work?)?
Two completely different detection mechanisms. Many years ago I was part of a team that designed office PABX systems. You detect that a phone has gone off hook, connect a DTMF decoder to the line and also monitor the line for pulses that meet the spec for pulse dialling. Take the digits from whichever one produces output.

There was the classic hack for payphones some years ago where they didn't mute the forward speech path - use a tone dialler (as provided by your local bank at the time) to dial the number you wanted into the handset, then dial 999 on the phone itself. The exchange would dial based on the tones and the phone, being a pulse dialler, would see that you'd called the emergency number and leave all the speech circuits open so you got a free call to anywhere you liked.

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Re: I am on the phone!

#12 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:35 pm

G-CPTN wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:57 pm

Eltham Palace
Thanks for posting that. What an elegant palace. So much nicer than some of the rococo or baroque piles that assail our eyesight sometimes, don't you think!

I am a fan of art deco.

I see that that Courtauld branch of the family moved to Rhodesia.

Stephen Courtauld

One wonders what happened to their estate near Mutare?
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Re: I am on the phone!

#13 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:45 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:02 pm
ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 1:27 pm
TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 10:46 am
Don't get me going on DTMF!

How nerdy is this. Wonderful.... :-bd
Aver get involved with programming Auto Call Units?

I did ~X(
Twice ~X( ~X(
ACU's? Oh yes! ;)))

Which subject segues into UART's, modems, DTE, switched networks and similar madness...
Thankfully the Hayes Modem ended all that.

If I ever meet Dennis Hayes, I'll buy him all the beer he can drink.
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Re: I am on the phone!

#14 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:53 pm

ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:45 pm

Thankfully the Hayes Modem ended all that.

If I ever meet Dennis Hayes, I'll buy him all the beer he can drink.
V32/34 modems that just worked. The arrival of the internet put paid to the point to point stuff in the main and ISDN did for the rest. I think that the Hayes company went bankrupt. No doubt Dennis Hayes sold out and is sitting fishing in the sun in Florida or somewhere like that. :)

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"To be alive
You must have somewhere
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Your destination remains
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Re: I am on the phone!

#15 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:59 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:53 pm
ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:45 pm

Thankfully the Hayes Modem ended all that.

If I ever meet Dennis Hayes, I'll buy him all the beer he can drink.
V32/34 modems that just worked. The arrival of the internet put paid to the point to point stuff in the main and ISDN did for the rest. I think that the Hayes company went bankrupt. No doubt Dennis Hayes sold out and is sitting fishing in the sun in Florida or somewhere like that. :)
The last I heard he was running a club in Atlanta.
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Re: I am on the phone!

#16 Post by G-CPTN » Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:02 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:53 pm
ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 2:45 pm

Thankfully the Hayes Modem ended all that.

If I ever meet Dennis Hayes, I'll buy him all the beer he can drink.
I think that the Hayes company went bankrupt. No doubt Dennis Hayes sold out and is sitting fishing in the sun in Florida or somewhere like that. :)
Hayes ran the company until it filed for bankruptcy in 1998 when the technology was incorporated into the products of competitors.

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Re: I am on the phone!

#17 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:18 pm

Keeping the dual channel of communication theme of the telephone and the Courtaulds going here, I am fascinated to see that Stephen Courtauld was a member of the Capricorn Africa Society started by David Stirling.

Capricorn Africa

David Stirling

To deny that David Stirling was a complicated man would be like telling ian16th that programming an early ACU was simple. A calumny in other words.
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Re: I am on the phone!

#18 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:31 pm

Careful, or I might present my next digit to you!

:-h
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Re: I am on the phone!

#19 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:59 pm

ian16th wrote:
Fri Feb 14, 2020 4:31 pm
Careful, or I might present my next digit to you!

:-h
;)))
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Your destination remains
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Re: I am on the phone!

#20 Post by ian16th » Fri Feb 14, 2020 6:24 pm

The really good news is that I cannot remember the sequence of that protocol.
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