Re: Old Party-Line Arrangements

I've gleaned from various sources, including some old Digest posts,

> that in the U.S. there were various methods employed, including up to > 10-way party lines with the last digit of the number selecting tip or > ring and the appropriate ringing cadence. I've also seen references > to tuned ringers with ringing applied at a different frequency for > each party,

Yup, they did all that. Tuned ringers, various combinations of ringing tip/ring vs. tip/ground, and ring patterns.

and to party-line numbers having an additional digit > (coded as a letter) added the end of the regular number.

Only on manual exchanges where you saw a lot of numbers like 1234J, or it was just spelled out, e.g. my mother's phone number in Bell territory in Vermont in the 1930s and 40s was six two ring three. (Not that she ever needed to use it since the operator knew her and would reroute calls, e.g., "your mother's playing bridge at the Cliffords' tonight, shall I ring her there?")

On older dial exchanges the last digit typically picked the ring pattern, on later ones it was all programmable by wiring.

When it comes to outgoing calls once DDD and CAMA had arrived, I've > seen references to different ringer wiring combinations to enable the > equipment to test for originating party, and also in the earlier days > of DDD that in some places (maybe small independents?) callers had to > dial an ID digit (e.g. 1x + NPA + number).

In the 1970s, I knew people at non-Bell independents who used circle digits, the extra digit to identify the calling phone. There was also a surprising amount of ONI, operators cutting in to ask for your number, even on private lines in Bell territory before ANI was universal.

Relatives who run a small independent told me that party line billing was a huge hassle since kids would lie to the ONI operator and they spent a lot of time getting the calls reassigned to the right parties.

Regards,

John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com, Mayor,

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Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My grandmother told me once that when she was a middle age lady (she lived in Coffeyville on Southwestern Bell; they of course had manual [and party line] service in those days), the system allowed the phone of the person for whom the call was intended to ring normally; others who were on the party line would only get a feeble 'tick' from the bell clapper. She said the old biddies on the party line would set the phone in a galvanized laundry tub, so even if they were sitting out on the front porch on a hot summer night, they would all hear that (amplified by the galvanized tub) 'tick sound', and the front-porch ladies would quietly slip inside and try to listen/spy on the neighbor who had received the phone call, to find out who had called and what they were talking about. PAT]
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John Levine
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