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Comment by colanderman | Hacker News Reader

Back in the days of landlines, all corded phones in a house effectively acted as an intercom system. Two or more users could pick up handsets, and their voices would be broadcast to one another.

This worked even while on a call. If you had siblings (or snooping parents), you learned to be alert for the click sound during a call which indicated that someone else had picked up a handset and was now eavesdropping.

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When I was a kid, a single phone line was shared between 3 or so homes. If you picked up the phone and heard the neighbors talking, you said sorry and hung up and waited for a while before trying again.

When the phone rang, the ring was morse code for the letter matching the intended home. Our number was 4045D, so our ring was long, short, short.

My dad grew up with "party lines", as they were called back then, with over 10 lines.

The number of rings determined who the call was for and anyone (even in different houses on the same line) could pick up and listen in or talk on the line.

Some systems used phased ringi g so only the correct phone would ring, but I'm having trouble finding details.

That last party line in the US was taken out in 1991! https://www.numberbarn.com/blog/phone-history-party-lines/

It's amazing to think that even switchboard operators were a thing long into the 1980s.

There wasn't an operator, though. It's a "party line". The same wire pair is connected to multiple subscribers. My grandmother had one of these in the early 80s.

I don’t know why exactly but I genuinely love this image - thank you for sharing. It makes me nostalgic for a time I never even experienced

Very interesting, when and where was this?

In New Zealand in the late 1960s.

My Kindergarten class in the late 80's had a phone system between play areas for the kids to use. The system was built using some old phones and lantern batteries for power. As a small child it was really neat to pick up the phone and talk to someone on the other side of the classroom.

I recall trying to build a can-and-string phone. There's something magical about remote communication, especially if it's completely analog - just the power of your voice.

Wow, that's so cool!

How old are we all now that we talk about this as if it where ancient stuff? I remember my grandfather tell me about how they used to gather around the radio to listen to the radio shows (or whatever these were called...). Incredible how something like a land line phone is now a thing of the past (not so distant!). In Argentina it was not until the lates nineties that most people have access to a phone at home. Now everyone has a mobile phone. The power of technology evolving at exponential rate I guess!

> In Argentina it was not until the lates nineties that most people have access to a phone at home. Now everyone has a mobile phone. The power of technology evolving at exponential rate I guess!

And there are places elsewhere in the world (for example, some African countries) that skipped completely landlines because mobile phones require much less pervasive infrastructure to work properly.

At least in Argentina it was not because of the infrastructures, it was because of the telefonica monopoly. Once deregulated, private companies came and in few years most middle class families could have a land line, cable tv and Internet.

I'm only 35, but even when I was young (90s) the rotary phones we had were considered dated technology. (Pushbutton phones were more typical; cordless phones were the new thing.) Northeast US.

My mother still uses those rotary phones, BTW. Somehow the telco in her area still supports click-dialing. Incoming calls are great, every damn phone in the house rings simultaneously; sounds like a fire alarm.

Where I grew up the phone lines weren't very well isolated, so if lightning struck within a few mile radius the phone would ring before the thunder arrived.

I was thinking that too, but at the same time I'm glad those days are over. I don't miss that at all.

I was thrilled that my ISP/Cable company didn't try to sell me their "TV and Phone" bundle because they understood the absurdity or could tell by my voice and interests that I wouldn't be interested or the target audience.

I’m also very happy. I was reflecting about the speedy nature of tech changes. Now no one “remembers” land lines AF of these were from there 50s or before (I guess they are?). What’s next? Currencies? Over the air tv? Gasoline? What things that we take for granted will disappear, obsolete 20 years from now?

On the other hand, if your ISP was crap, you could easily pick a new one. If they were all crap, you could start your own with a t1 to connect to the internet, and another t1 (or less) to answer calls.

If your phone company was crap, you were kind of stuck, but they usually weren't too bad.

I still have to pay for a phone line (UK, Virgin Media), as it's cheaper, but there isn't even a phone jack in the house now.

I used my very first paycheck from my very first job as a teen to get my own phone line set up in my room. Mostly so I could use the internet (dial-up at the time) without tying up the phone line, but also so I could avoid my siblings snooping on my calls.

It also worked out because my parents could just call me when it was time for dinner.

That must have been a big paycheck!

Getting connected the first time is cheap. It's the bill that comes for the second month for all those minutes that gets you!

My first job was washing dishes at a cafe for about 30 hours a week for minimum wage (which in my state at the time was around $5 an hour). I also got a portion of the tips made by the front room staff (usually a few bucks a day). So as a teen who wasn’t expected to pay rent or anything it was a pretty decent amount of money!

I also installed the phone line tap in my room myself, so initially I just had to pay for them to come out and turn on the line via the hookup box outside. I think it was like $50 for the initial setup and I saved $100 by running the tap myself.

Mid 90s you'd only pay $15 a month for basic service in some places. Probably less for second lines.

ISPs were spottier. I knew some people with T1s paid for with weekend jobs, but some could barely scrape 56k costs.

Where I lived, the minimum wage was about three bucks.

In fact you had to be on a call, otherwise the dial tone would drown out your voices.

You could dial just 1 digit and the dial tone would stop. You could tap the off switch to do pulse dialing too (a bit like morse code).

I forget the exact details, but as a kid, I'd tap the switch and hang up the phone I think and then that would cause the phone to ring in the house so that you could "call" somebody.

I remember you could dial your own number, and it would call you back with a recording.

I also remember dialing a three digit number (maybe 118), and an automated voice would reply with the number you are calling from.

In the UK bitd (~1980) the test number was 174. It just rang you back when you hung up. There was no message. The exchanges weren't that sophisticated.

What country was this in? I distinctly remember dialing my own number resulting in nothing but a busy signal.

On mine, it was 981 followed by the last 4 digits of my phone number that would result in a "callback," and a constant tone would play when you answered.

I’ve also (a decade ago) called my own number (a cell line) and it gave me my voice mail as if I had just “speed dialed” “1”

You can still do that on hard-wired AT&T land lines. The hardware at the CO end supports it, and it's still enabled.

Yep, I forgot this step.

I had a friend who had an intercom system in their home — they were not uncommon in suburban, mid-Century modern homes in the day.

Unlike using multiple telephones, the recipient did not have to be on the line — you could broadcast "Dinner's ready!".

I think I need an intercom as my teen daughters spend all their time up in their rooms....

I know they're unpopular on HN, but smart speakers are an easy off-the-shelf solution for this, saying "Hey Google, broadcast 'dinner in ten'" will cause all the Home/Nest/whatever they're branded this month units to say "Broadcast from $USER, dinner in ten". Same syntax works for Alexa.

I guess I still like the lower-tech, "wired" intercoms.

you can also broadcast to a specific room with google home. "hey google , broadcast to (PERSON ROOM)." you just have to add that GH to a room by that name in the Home app.

This ended before landlines did - When I was growing up it was common that you only had one phone line connected (or only one period). Multiple handsets were handled by a base station which used some form of wireless transmission. If the handset hadn't been used to pick up a call, it wouldn't play back the signal (I'm sure given the time period, it was still being broadcast, and unsecured, but it was still a bit more involved to listen in than just picking up the other handset).

That's what I meant by "corded phones". You are of course correct this would not work with a single set of cordless phones.

You are right, cordless phones definitely broadcast with no encryption of any sort. There was a recent HN thread about how radio receivers were banned from receiving the band these phones used because of this.

We used to do this by calling the house number, hanging up, and picking up both ends on the ring.

Works just fine with a 6-piece Panasonic DECT set from Costco. It's technically a landline phone, but you don't need to plug it in, or can use one of these Chinese Ethernet-to-phone-line boxes.

While this could be the case, it was not always the case for landlines.

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