If you wanted to call someone, you first pick up the receiver and listen. You might suddenly be eavesdropping on another person’s call, and you might try to convince them to hang up right there in the call.
Teenagers would beg their parents to get them a second line so they could talk to their friends without getting interrupted.
On a more rare occasion, someone might have left the receiver off the hook. When you do that, it would make a terrible racket for a short while, then it would give up. So if you needed the phone, you’d pick up the receiver and nothing would happen. You had to go through the house to each phone and make sure it was hung up.
That last bit reminds me of a prank that my friends and I used to play in high school in the 90s. We would make a Beigebox, which is just a normal landline phone with alligator clips on the cord instead of the normal connector. You could use the alligator clips to attach the beigebox to someone’s phone line from the exterior of their house, at the phone junction box. We would do this, take the phone off the hook and hide it. Their phone would be tied up until they found and disconnected it. Sometimes it would take them days (or contacting the phone company from another line) to find the issue. If we were feeling particularly malicious, we would dial internationally or a 900 number instead of just leaving it off the hook.
Reading this back now, I feel like to Gen Z this prank reads like “In the previous century, I would play a naughty trick by filling the chamber pot of mine enemy with adobe so that it cannot be cleaned.”
I mean, this is some pretty hardcore catastrophizing. You’re absolutely right, both of those scenarios are possible, but incredibly unlikely. At the time and place this happened, it was pretty common for phone lines to be busy or unavailable, they would call back with important news. People also knew and interacted with their neighbors, who would help if they heard someone shouting.
Most pranks aren’t things that make you laugh, they’re mostly teenagers being pieces of shit.
You kinda missed one of the major reasons of why phreakers built the beigeboxes. We used them to find lines that were connected to the phone company switches but not hooked up to any subscriber, so that we could make expensive calls that nobody would have to pay for. For example, long-distance or Internet dialup.
The beigebox was basically just a DIY Lineman’s Handset (LMHS), a common tool used by telco workers for troubleshooting when doing field work.
A big part of being a teenager is being a piece of shit. If it makes you feel better, I realized that my friends doing this never stopped being pieces of shit and I cut them out of my life.
I’ve done that, too, and I even was on the other side of that a few times. You go to send a fax, and it has a speaker so you can hear it connect, but instead, you hear a person’s voice saying hello. Feels bad. Not all faxes had speakers like that, so I probably did it more often than I know about.
I think what’s your describing was called a “party line”. My grandma had one of those, and when an incoming call was for her, the bell would ring two times. If it rang one time, it was for her neighbor.
You had to have multiple jacks, because the phone cord was only so long. No one wants to go running through the house to get to the phone before it stops ringing.
Are they not building houses with phone jacks anymore? I mean, I know “no one” has a landline, but not even the wiring?
My childhood home (where I currently live) is 50 years old. Not only is there a phone jack in the kitchen wall, but the master bedroom has a 4-ft phone line coming out of the wall. Like, a literal permanent line. There’s a plastic box on the wood trim next to the floor and the line is spliced and wired into that box. If the line breaks, we need to pull off the box and splice a new cable to the connectors inside.
That line used to be connected to a small rotary dial phone, but the phone was removed years ago.
Also, the kitchen originally had a large rotary dial phone hanging on the wall when I was a kid. I’m a millennial (in my early 40s), but my parents had kids late in their life, so they’re really old (my dad isn’t a boomer; he’s actually from the silent generation!). So they grew up with rotary phones, and thus I grew up with one too.
Also, eventually people got those cordless phones to get around the cord length/tangling problem.
My parents solved this problem by buying a 15-ft phone cord for the kitchen phone. You could wander anywhere in the kitchen, dining room, and a few steps into the living room from the kitchen phone.
I have OCD and was obsessed with untangling the curly phone lines, so my family never had to worry about that.
When touch tone phones came out, the phone companies had this brilliant idea to scam more money out of people and charged extra to use touch tone. So, my parents didn’t want to pay for that and used rotary phones long after they went out of fashion. And even the touch tone phones they bought had a switch to set them to “dial pulse” mode.
I still remember some guests’ looks of astonishment when they went to dial a number and the phone didn’t make the expected noise. Some even had no idea how a rotary phone worked.
But that’s just the jack. Either can use CAT5/6/7 cabling and most RJ11 in more recent homes is still CAT5 or better. But that doesn’t mean the builders didn’t staple it to the studs making it worthless for anything more than 10BASE-T (if even that).
Mine had some wiring for it when i moved in in 2014, but we never used it and removed them as we came across them since we knew its not needed ever again at this point. Same with coax for cable tv which we did use for a few years but switched to streaming and from what i see even cable boxes are just wifi and connect back to the demarc point were they installed the main box. Only one we kept was the coax coming into the house for internet which is or can still be used for now.
With that said i absolutely want to run CAT6 cable through the house were the basement has 1 spot with a switch that has 1 feed to the main floor back to the demarc and same for the 1st floor. I hate wifi and sure its great for phones and stuff, but if i can have my tv streaming boxes, pcs, and gaming consoles on wired then i absolutely will do that instead. As someone who works in IT, the number one complaint i see is employees working from home and cant figure out why voip calls or meetings sound awful until i point out their terrible wifi situation from either not being close enough to it or still using that 10 year old service provider all in one router.
If you wanted to call someone, you first pick up the receiver and listen. You might suddenly be eavesdropping on another person’s call, and you might try to convince them to hang up right there in the call.
Teenagers would beg their parents to get them a second line so they could talk to their friends without getting interrupted.
On a more rare occasion, someone might have left the receiver off the hook. When you do that, it would make a terrible racket for a short while, then it would give up. So if you needed the phone, you’d pick up the receiver and nothing would happen. You had to go through the house to each phone and make sure it was hung up.
That last bit reminds me of a prank that my friends and I used to play in high school in the 90s. We would make a Beigebox, which is just a normal landline phone with alligator clips on the cord instead of the normal connector. You could use the alligator clips to attach the beigebox to someone’s phone line from the exterior of their house, at the phone junction box. We would do this, take the phone off the hook and hide it. Their phone would be tied up until they found and disconnected it. Sometimes it would take them days (or contacting the phone company from another line) to find the issue. If we were feeling particularly malicious, we would dial internationally or a 900 number instead of just leaving it off the hook.
Reading this back now, I feel like to Gen Z this prank reads like “In the previous century, I would play a naughty trick by filling the chamber pot of mine enemy with adobe so that it cannot be cleaned.”
That’s not a prank. That could ruin someone’s life. What if some relative was dying and the victim didn’t find out because you cut their phone line?
What if they needed to call 000(911) in an emergency?
I wouldn’t see this as a joke, man.
I mean, this is some pretty hardcore catastrophizing. You’re absolutely right, both of those scenarios are possible, but incredibly unlikely. At the time and place this happened, it was pretty common for phone lines to be busy or unavailable, they would call back with important news. People also knew and interacted with their neighbors, who would help if they heard someone shouting.
Most pranks aren’t things that make you laugh, they’re mostly teenagers being pieces of shit.
You kinda missed one of the major reasons of why phreakers built the beigeboxes. We used them to find lines that were connected to the phone company switches but not hooked up to any subscriber, so that we could make expensive calls that nobody would have to pay for. For example, long-distance or Internet dialup.
The beigebox was basically just a DIY Lineman’s Handset (LMHS), a common tool used by telco workers for troubleshooting when doing field work.
We also did that.
There are cool pranks. But this is just being a piece of shit. It’s as funny as flattening a tire.
A big part of being a teenager is being a piece of shit. If it makes you feel better, I realized that my friends doing this never stopped being pieces of shit and I cut them out of my life.
You’re my hero.
I begged my mother for a second line…. But it was for my modem. So i could stay online longer lol
Did she get you a second line?
nope heh
bummer
One time I answered a fax.
I’ve done that, too, and I even was on the other side of that a few times. You go to send a fax, and it has a speaker so you can hear it connect, but instead, you hear a person’s voice saying hello. Feels bad. Not all faxes had speakers like that, so I probably did it more often than I know about.
I think what’s your describing was called a “party line”. My grandma had one of those, and when an incoming call was for her, the bell would ring two times. If it rang one time, it was for her neighbor.
What I am describing is one line to one house, but with multiple phone jacks inside the house.
A party line was the same thing, but with one line shared for multiple houses.
You had to have multiple jacks, because the phone cord was only so long. No one wants to go running through the house to get to the phone before it stops ringing.
Are they not building houses with phone jacks anymore? I mean, I know “no one” has a landline, but not even the wiring?
The house I’m living in is over 10 years old and has zero phone jacks.
Also, eventually people got those cordless phones to get around the cord length/tangling problem.
My childhood home (where I currently live) is 50 years old. Not only is there a phone jack in the kitchen wall, but the master bedroom has a 4-ft phone line coming out of the wall. Like, a literal permanent line. There’s a plastic box on the wood trim next to the floor and the line is spliced and wired into that box. If the line breaks, we need to pull off the box and splice a new cable to the connectors inside.
That line used to be connected to a small rotary dial phone, but the phone was removed years ago.
Also, the kitchen originally had a large rotary dial phone hanging on the wall when I was a kid. I’m a millennial (in my early 40s), but my parents had kids late in their life, so they’re really old (my dad isn’t a boomer; he’s actually from the silent generation!). So they grew up with rotary phones, and thus I grew up with one too.
My parents solved this problem by buying a 15-ft phone cord for the kitchen phone. You could wander anywhere in the kitchen, dining room, and a few steps into the living room from the kitchen phone.
I have OCD and was obsessed with untangling the curly phone lines, so my family never had to worry about that.
When touch tone phones came out, the phone companies had this brilliant idea to scam more money out of people and charged extra to use touch tone. So, my parents didn’t want to pay for that and used rotary phones long after they went out of fashion. And even the touch tone phones they bought had a switch to set them to “dial pulse” mode.
I still remember some guests’ looks of astonishment when they went to dial a number and the phone didn’t make the expected noise. Some even had no idea how a rotary phone worked.
I wouldn’t pay an electrician to wire R45 through the house in 2026, that seems pointless. Even if I had a house phone it’d be VoiP
I think you meant RJ11. Ethernet uses RJ45.
But that’s just the jack. Either can use CAT5/6/7 cabling and most RJ11 in more recent homes is still CAT5 or better. But that doesn’t mean the builders didn’t staple it to the studs making it worthless for anything more than 10BASE-T (if even that).
Yes, thank you. I wasn’t aware that cat 6 could carry a phone signal but I don’t see why not, just use fewer leads?
Yep! Four twisted pairs. Each can carry a phone line. Tip and ring!
Might be worth having someone run cat6e in a similar fashion though. I had it done in my previous house and it was glorious.
Mine had some wiring for it when i moved in in 2014, but we never used it and removed them as we came across them since we knew its not needed ever again at this point. Same with coax for cable tv which we did use for a few years but switched to streaming and from what i see even cable boxes are just wifi and connect back to the demarc point were they installed the main box. Only one we kept was the coax coming into the house for internet which is or can still be used for now.
With that said i absolutely want to run CAT6 cable through the house were the basement has 1 spot with a switch that has 1 feed to the main floor back to the demarc and same for the 1st floor. I hate wifi and sure its great for phones and stuff, but if i can have my tv streaming boxes, pcs, and gaming consoles on wired then i absolutely will do that instead. As someone who works in IT, the number one complaint i see is employees working from home and cant figure out why voip calls or meetings sound awful until i point out their terrible wifi situation from either not being close enough to it or still using that 10 year old service provider all in one router.