[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least on the older Bell
> switchboards, there was a certain contact on the network (inside the
> switchboard) to mute your earpiece from the audio on touch tones while
> still playing them out over the phone. It was generally only done for
> switchboard operators to prevent them having to listen to the tones
> all the time as they placed calls. PAT]
Are you sure that wasn't MF tones rather than Touch-Tone? Operators ordinarily used MF signaling, not Touch-Tome.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The *only time* I experienced this was when I filled in overnight two or three times for the regular switch- board operator at the 14 East Delaware Apartments in Chicago. A large building (20 stories, with about 150 apartments), they had a switchboard for tenants; that was about 1965 or so. Unlike most of those older high-rise buildings which had switchboards for the tenants with _rotary dials_ on them, this one had a little box built in with a touchtone pad. The tenants could hear the touch tones, but the operator could _not_. I have no idea how they wired it to do that. PAT]