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I spent some time yesterday listening to WCBS-AM, to get some last listening in before its demised. The programming was basically a retrospective look on the history of the station, going back to the 1930s. Sad to see it go—when I was living in North Carolina, I'd sometimes even listen to it at night. The range was almost 700 km, but it was a 50 kilowatt clear channel station, so it (often) worked.
@SteveBellovin
I struggle to find a good analog in the digital present day for the magic of finding a distant radio signal, enticingly degraded, hovering at the edge of human perception.
That experience is apparently a fleeting one in human history, just a brief century. I wonder what other similar experiences of the more distant past are completely unknown to us now?
@inthehands @mattblaze and I have talked about some complex mechanical things that we no longer do: railroad interlockings, lever voting machines, the cell door locks at Alcatraz, and doubtless many more I don’t know about. (Railroad interlockings make sure that signals and switch tracks only change state in a safe order. For example, a signal must be turned to STOP before a switch is lined against oncoming traffic.)
@SteveBellovin @inthehands @mattblaze
the old mechanical phone switches are amazing
:verifi @paul_ipv6 @SteveBellovin @inthehands @mattblaze How did the old people take pictures with their phones?
@VickForcella @SteveBellovin @inthehands @mattblaze
used the phone to call someone with a camera?
@paul_ipv6 @VickForcella @SteveBellovin @inthehands
Believe it or not, there were person-sized kiosks every block or so containing large books of telephone users in the local geographic area, with a unique seven-digit code for each user. (One of these books, printed on yellow paper, had a section for "photographers".)
Also in the booth was a coin-operated device, connected by wire to a central office, that allowed two-way voice communication with the person associated with each code number.
@mattblaze @paul_ipv6 @VickForcella @SteveBellovin
Ah…! The loss of the phone book as a metaphor, as a process example, and as a useful physical object is profound.
Now for the phone book’s actual intended purpose…meh, our current situation is a net improvement. But for all that other stuff…!
@inthehands @mattblaze @VickForcella @SteveBellovin
oh yeah. phone books. the DNS of the phone network. ;)
@paul_ipv6
And the cross-cross books for reverse DNS.
@inthehands @mattblaze @paul_ipv6 @VickForcella When you grew up in NYC, as I did, phone books were also useful as ad hoc booster seats for small kids.
@SteveBellovin @inthehands @paul_ipv6 @VickForcella "Manhattan phone book" was a well-understood unit of volume.
@mattblaze @SteveBellovin @inthehands @VickForcella
:)
chicago city was a similar useful:
- metric
- hammer
- child seat
@mattblaze @SteveBellovin @inthehands @paul_ipv6 @VickForcella
But the best phone book story is Mythbusters’ attempt to separate phone books with interleaved pages… which needed 2 military vehicles located in my small town, then largest private collection in US & we knew the owner. At least they didn’t need to escalate to Scud missile launchers.
90 secs:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hOt-D_ee-JE