>> Would anyone remember in what year dual-mode phones (keypad with a
>> little switch to convert to pulse if necessary) came out in wide
>> quantity? I think that was around the time they stopped using real
>> ringer bells. My guess is the late 1980s.
> Third-party manufacturers of phones for direct attach to the PSTN
> offered it from nearly day one. That way you could have th 'fancy
> looking' push-button phone _without_ having to pay the telco extra
> every month for Touch-Tone(tm) service.
I recall a few models that only did DP, but with buttons like a DTMF pad. The far more common application, though, was a phone with a DTMF pad, but could be switched between DTMF and DP. There were still pockets of switches around until into the 1990s that could not handle DTMF.