Before the internet

[Ned]

There was MF and there was DTMF, each used a separate set of frequencies.  MF was for in band signalling between switching centers (trunks) while DTMF was used for in band signaling from a telephone set to the switching center (lines).

 

[Larry N.]

Actually Tom, MF (as used in the U.S. telephone industry) was not the same as Touch Tone?, though TT was also using a pair of tone frequencies, so the principal was the same and it was a form of multifreq. MF was used between central offices, and otherwise internally, but not out to the customer loop. I suspect the same tone differences were used in the UK, too.

Oops, hadn't spotted your post, Ned. DTMF was, indeed, what was trade named Touch Tone?.

 

[Larry N.]

I still recall that when I was a kid, Dad always had a private line (most people had party lines, even in town, where we were), since he had to make (and receive) so many business calls when he was home. For that reason, at least, we were only rarely allowed to use the phone (no call waiting back then ;D ). And long distance was extremely rare for us (except Dad's business calls), since it was so expensive. Letters were the way family kept in touch.

In fact, until my folks died, they were still in touch with family via a "Round Robin" letter. Since Dad and his cousins had all grown up together around the farming community of Lebanon, KS (north central KS), most of them on farms, they instituted the "Round Robin" quite early on -- it was a part of my growing up. The way it worked was, that when it gets to you, you remove your last letter included in it, and replace it with a new one, then send the whole assembly (with all the letters from everyone) on to the next person on the list. So over a few months you could keep up with the latest from everyone.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Just the other day I stumbled across part of my old Road Warrior kit - a bag full of various phone cords, clip leads, connector and adapters.  One of the coils of phone line was a 250 footer - just in case the phone box wasn't near by. I couldn't bring myself to throw the stuff away, even though I'll probably never need it again. Too much nostalgia.

 

[Lorna]

We had a wall phone on the farm and the ring was a long, short, and a long.  Can't remember the number though.  One time I called my parents from Milwaukee, WI to the farm and my mother couldn't hear me very well and I told her that if all the rubber-necks would hang up she would be able to hear me just fine.  Well you could hear the click, click, click etc. all the way down the line.  When cradle phone came out she never could remember which end went to the ear and the mouth :-[ 

 

[Tom]

OK guys quit beating me up 

Yes, I was referring to DTMF. My use of "MF" was me being too lazy to type out 'multi frequency'. A little voice in the back of my head while I was typing said that someone would correct me  ;D

I clarified that it was in the customer loop (in different words), and folks understanding the technical differences would know what we're talking about.

 

[Tom]

An old, but true, story ....

One time I was staying at a bed & breakfast in the UK. The B&B was actually a pub downstairs with a few guest rooms upstairs, and I'd verified ahead of time that they had a phone line I could use to get online.

When I arrived, I found that the only phone line was behind the bar in the pub. So I plopped my computer on the bar, plugged in a long phone cord (the UK uses a 'BT' plug instead of RJ11), and proceeded to get online. The modem ran a whopping 300 baud, so you could easily read stuff as it scrolled across the screen.

Every time I went online, I had an audience of locals, pints (of beer) in hand, reading the scrolling messages. This was a small village in the boonies, and nobody had seen a computer before, let alone a portable one. There were lots of oohs and ahhs until I logged off.

 

[Ned]

Clarke's 3rd law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

And is good for free beer

 

[docj]

Actually Tom, MF (as used in the U.S. telephone industry) was not the same as Touch Tone?, though TT was also using a pair of tone frequencies, so the principal was the same and it was a form of multifreq. MF was used between central offices, and otherwise internally, but not out to the customer loop. I suspect the same tone differences were used in the UK, too.

Oops, hadn't spotted your post, Ned. DTMF was, indeed, what was trade named Touch Tone?.

One of the fascinating things about the MF system was that it didn't care where it received its tones from.  So a "creative" person could input the appropriate tones though the handset and control how a call was routed.  Voila, the birth of the "blue box".  I can recall when a friend of mine demonstrated to me how a call could be routed around the world so a call from a phone in one dorm room to a phone in another would have a slight voice delay due to the longer path. 

For those too young to remember, AT&T created its own headaches with this when it published all the details of its network in a technical journal in the early 1950's.  They were rightly proud of their creation, but a young student discovered the article and the rest became history.

 

[Tom]

[quote author=Ned]And is good for free beer [/quote]

I received free beer for the duration of my stay  ;D  The hardest part was making it up the stairs to my room every night 

 

[Lou Schneider]

TouchTone was the same as the MF inter-exchange routing tone pairs except each frequency was slightly offset.  You could tweak the inductors in a standard DTMF keypad to produce the correct inter-exchange tones and you were almost in business.

You also had to create an access tone that was different than the MF tones to get into the routing equipment.  One hacker discovered the peanut whistle included as a prize in Capt'n Crunch breakfast cereal boxes could create that tone, and the rest is history.

 

[PatrioticStabilist]

We think we are so advanced.  It was many years ago and we were going to get high speed internet out here with Charter cable.  Before that I used dial up.  My son was home and couldn't believe we were just getting it.  He said in Korea they had been wired for high speed for many years so here many rural areas were just starting to get anything at all.

OH I remember why it was such a big deal, we could then us skype.

 

[Wendy]

There is a museum in Farmington New Mexico, the Bolack Museum. This guy has collected more "antique" electronic "stuff" than I knew existed. If you electronic junkies are ever in Farmington, it's probably worth a visit. I found it to be interesting, briefly. The funnest part was seeing things that we used to have that were cutting-edge technology I think they bought our old Apple II GS and put it in there

Wendy

 

[Larry N.]

TouchTone was the same as the MF inter-exchange routing tone pairs except each frequency was slightly offset.  You could tweak the inductors in a standard DTMF keypad to produce the correct inter-exchange tones and you were almost in business.

You also had to create an access tone that was different than the MF tones to get into the routing equipment.  One hacker discovered the peanut whistle included as a prize in Capt'n Crunch breakfast cereal boxes could create that tone, and the rest is history.

Yeah, that 2600 cps (er, excuse me, Hz) signal (no longer used, at least in most of the U.S.) was the on/off hook freq. That whistle (and sometimes people whistling) at that freq allowed the "phone phreaks" to game the system. That was a lot of (not all of) the impetus for going to out of band signaling on the phone network.

 

[Lou Schneider]

My favorite early Internet memory is my month long tour of Australia in 1995.  I discovered Compuserve (remember them?) had local access numbers in all of AU's major cities so I packed my laptop, US Robotics 1200 baud external modem, an acoustical coupler handset and various pins, clipleads, etc.to hack into phone lines. It took some talking to get the conglomeration through AU customs, but I managed to stay in touch with friends and family and forums on an almost daily basis no matter where I went - including Alice Springs in the middle of the Outback. Which was good as I was on walkabout, traveling without itinerary.  At that time Australia Telecom only allowed "approved" modems at an extreme markup and most Aussies I encountered were amazed that my foreign modem worked perfectly well with the AU phone equipment.

 

[Ned]

Here's the story of John Draper, aka Captain Crunch.

 

[Terier]

Times have change for sure.  Thanks for the laugh.

A couple of years ago a friend was writing a check at Home Depot and the clerk started laughing telling him that check writing was so old school.

And you know you are old school when you can remember getting quarters back for change unlike today when you end up with handful of dimes. 

 

[geodrake]

LOL Lou. Actually, it was two tones, one representing the horizontal numbers on the keypad, and the other representing the vertical numbers. Thus the term "multi-frequency".

Actually it was named "DTMF"

 

[Tom]

[quote author=geodrake]Actually it was named "DTMF" [/quote]

You're right George, but we already had that discussion earlier in this topic.

 

[geodrake]

Opps!