That may have been true for NYC. It was *NOT* the case for many
> other areas. I, personally, used what you call 'dial tone first'
> phones -- in a fair-sized city -- in the _early_ 1960s. Those were
> the -only- kind of phones available anywhere in the area. In fact I
> never encountered a pay- phone of the 'post-pay' (deposit coins to
> open the outgoing talk path _after_ the call connected) until
> sometime in the late 1970s, in a very rural area in the Northern > Rockies.
Prepay phones and dial-tone-first are two different things. Most--I would say all--prepay phones required a coin deposit until around some time probably in the 1960s. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com