On of the Portland radio folk today mentioned the early 90s and 900
> numbers in his show today. His claim was some television advertisers
> would encourage you to hold the handset to the phone and the broadcast
> the tones and actually dial the 900 number.
> Do I just not remember this or was it never real? I check SNOPES and
> didn't see a reference. Telcomm has so many references, thankfully. I
> figured I'd go to the Master!
This seems odd, but it would have the advantage that there is no chance of a mis-dial. I wouldn't know whether any such advertiser actually bothered. I'm pretty sure TV audio would have been able to produce those dialing tones accurately enough.
Once tone dial was introduced, there certainly was never a requirement that the tone generator be connected to the wall by a wire all the way. The Apple Newton had that capability over ten years ago, and I remember reports of other portable devices that could dial that way:
formatting link