The 1975 movie "Three Days of the Condor" was on TCM the other night. It's about a CIA book researcher (Robert Redford) who gets into trouble. Good movie. It had a number of interesting telephone and technical details of that era.
The researcher used a DEC/PDP mini-computer which for its time was modern. It had the tiny tape wheels such machines were noted for and relatively quiet dot-matrix printers, somewhat new for the time. (The printers were certainly more quiet than line printers or Teletype or Selectric printers). It had an optical scanner to read the books. But one old fashioned item was an old style 1948 IBM 026 keypunch; by
1975 the standard keypunch was the 1960s IBM model 029. I'm not even sure the PDP accepted punched cards as input.(Some non-IBM computers needed to use the older 026 keypunch because they used BCD internal coding where as the 029 was EBCDIC).
Some scenes took place outside and inside the World Trade Center, which were a bit sad to watch.
On the streets of New York City and in the Hoboken Erie-Lackawanna railroad terminal, there were both traditional public phone booths (both aluminum and painted green) as well as pay phones on pedestals. I do recall at that time that street phone booths were gradually being converted to pedestals, though plenty of booths remained. All payphones in the movie were single slot, rotary. I don't recall if the old 3-slot pay phones remained in service in large cities in
1975.(There are a few baby-Bell outdoor public phone booths remaining in service to this day in various places; though the New York Times reported they are extremely rare in New York City.)
Someone made a credit card purchase in a store, the cashier phoned in the verification by voice, reading the credit card info and transaction over the phone. I forgot about those days. In so many stores today the credit card verification is integrated in the cash register itself, others have a separate keypad unit. I haven't seen an oral transaction in many years.
Regular telephones in the movie were both Touch Tone and rotary. In
1975 Touch Tone was gaining. Business phones were keyset and Call Director. Every phone had a bell ringer, no chirping.Redford stole a phone man's briefcase and snuck into a hotel utility room. Using a rotary "butt" testset, he called someone's room, then recorded the person's outward dialing. He then called a computer to translate the outpulsing into a number, then called a Bell office to get a name and address for that number.
Redford then snuck into a New York Telephone Company crossbar central office (the name plainly marked on the wall, with an old style Bell logo), and called the CIA from a test frame. He kept plugging in different spots to thwart their attempt to trace the car, making it appear his call was coming from multiple places in Brooklyn. (Whether that was truly possible or dramatic license I don't know.)