What happens if you leave your phone off the hook?

What would happen inside an electromechanical central office if you left your phone off hook?

[mutestingray]

The more I learn about the old telephone system, the more wild it becomes. The sheer complexity of it all. It’s incredible it ever worked in the first place.

[poormanselectronicsbench]

A cut cable didn't always cause lines to be shorted, BUT, if a cable got water into it, that would definitely cause a mass short. a 5ESS would protect itself by turning the battery off to those lines fairly quickly, but a old EM switch would just keep pumping battery into the wet short until it turned into a green gooey mess from electrolysis, especially if it was a splice that got wet. If caught in time, a ticket was ordered for a CO tech to remove the heat coils in the range of pairs that was affected by that wet cable, until it was attended to by a crew ( which as a cable splicer I was tasked to do for larger cable outages)

[meerkatmcr]

"Sarah waiting for machines on camera" is very wholesome content, and probably a genre in itself.

[randycarter]

Another reason for phones going off hook, especially in the Seattle area, is earthquakes. The shaking will knock phones every which way including pay phones (yes I'm that old to remember what a pay phone is). The guides for post disaster actions ask if you find a phone off hook hang it up. This helps clear the the jam faster allowing service to come back faster.

[FinnleysAudioAdventures]

Back in the 80s, there’d be times I’d be visiting my grandmother and she was still leasing an old rotary phone from the phone company. Sometimes the handset wouldn’t sit back properly and eventually the beeping would come on. Once I went to put the handset back down but the beeping stopped. I assumed it fixed itself but then I heard talking. The operator came on asking if anyone was there. I then hung up. We were in Southern California served by Pacific Bell at the time. After she passed, my dad tried to return the leased phone back to SBC and they didn’t know what to do because they stopped leasing phones a long time ago.

[matthewbearden]

I think it would be pretty cool to see the scripts used when talking to subscribers

[themaritimegirl]

When my Mom had a landline she would take it off hook every time she went to take a shower, so that she wouldn't feel pressured to jump out and answer the phone if it rang. I never considered the possibility of a CO worker taking action on that.

[jhonwask]

Someone so young who really knows about the electrics of the telephone system. You have a wonderful array of central office equipment. Do you have tours?

[wtmayhew]

When I was a kid, our town was served by a Bell SxS office. I believe the permanent signal tone was a wailing noise which varied in pitch which customer’s called the crybaby. The SxS office was interesting because there were enough microphonics, crosstalk or whatever going on, that you could usually hear pulsing, relay clicks and various noises. The background noise was more noticeable before the called party was cut in, but it was still audible in conversations. Crossed speech was unusual, but sometimes indistinctly audible. The town cut over to ESS in July of 1976, and it was a bit disconcerting because all that background noise disappeared all at once

[musiqtee]

Anecdote; As a 70’s kid in Norway, I’m pretty sure we didn’t have the “holler” step in the fault sequence. The older generation electro-mechanical switch (small town, possibly Strowger from early 30’s?) would cut the dial tone, then go silent (line noise, ghost audio). Not much happening at the subscriber end, as I recall.

Our local office was digitised quite early (just prior to 1980?), and this equipment simply switched to a busy-signal, maybe with a slightly different timing.

Hard to know what people used to do, but the phone book (part that nobody read, except nerdy me) asked people to pull the plug - please don’t off-hook.

Thanks for another great video! 😊

[StarryCactus]

"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up, and then dial your operator."

[CoffeeOnRails]

Hello from the UK!
Interestingly it seems that BT still use a whistle/howing tone for off hook. I found this out because my grandfather had dementia and left his phone off hook a couple of times. I had to find out “what the whistle was” in his home a few times.

[ghostbirdofprey]

"When you pick up your telephone, you are assigned a sender *mechanical noises in the background.*"
That's actually an excellent demonstration

[binarydinosaurs]

I love this stuff, I had zero idea that the phone system was this complicated. Back when I was a teenager if I'd visited the local exchange on an open day then I WOULD have gone into phone work. However, home computers had just exploded onto the scene so I went that way instead. Many 'what ifs' though. Cheers Sarah!

[KeritechElectronics]

The "I don't Care Anymore" Plug :)
Interesting circuit, I learned something new today. Thanks!

"Mew."

[samsousayt]

Please keep doing these informative / historical videos. Really enjoy the insights on why things came to be, and how it was handled in different systems trough time.

[StringerNews]

In my childhood home with kids, cats and dogs, a phone getting knocked off-hook was fairly common. One sound that I remember in addition to the others was a siren-like sound that varied pitch, not loudness. It was quite effective!

[brucekempf]

Off topic but when I was a phone phreaker in the 70's, we had numbers that were like permanent busy signals where you could talk loud and hear and talk to others. Of course the loop lines were more fun!

[frozendude]

In Sweden for a long time, until the beginning of the 90s, if both parties did not hang up the circuit would stay connected, so people could hang up and ask someone to pick up another phone in the home, but if the other party failed to hang up properly that also meant you could no longer make another call...

[CandyGramForMongo_]

I love the enthusiasm with your videos. Great teacher.