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Comment by jmedefind | Hacker News Reader

I just did the same thing for my kids, they love rotary dialing.

Plus Grandpa can call them anytime.

I never had a rotary phone, by the time I was born (1990) touch-tone was pretty much the standard everywhere, and my parents were/are kind of "gadget people" and as such tried to keep their tech super current (we had internet in our house before any of my friends did, for example).

I've never actually used a rotary phone that was actually in service. I think I know how to dial with it, and I've played with one briefly at a GoodWill about 17 years ago. They definitely have a very satisfying "chunkiness" to them, as most clockwork gadgets tend to. I wouldn't mind picking one up but I have to fight against my hoarding tendencies, and I don't have any kids to which I can justify making them a toy.

I’m old enough that, growing up, rotaries would have worked on our phone line but not old enough to have actually had a rotary phone. It did used to cost more for touch tone service though (incredibly) and my dad was cheap so our digital phones were all set to pulse dial mode.

All the “high tech” of a digital phone with the “fun” of having to wait for the digits to pulse out! Also I figured out at a young age that pulse dial was just toggling the rocker switch so I got pretty good at dialing by tapping the switch myself.

> Also I figured out at a young age that pulse dial was just toggling the rocker switch

I saw a Cathode Ray Dude video that talked about this recently. I definitely would have enjoyed playing with this and annoying my parents if I had known that that was how it worked.

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