TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Urban Legend or Never Before Heard of Truth?

Re: Urban Legend or Never Before Heard of Truth?

Ron Kritzman (ron@dbOnayAmspaYmasters.com)
Fri, 22 Dec 2006 12:58:33 -0600

HOWARD PIERPONT wrote:

> .... 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 ...

In my many years in the answering service and paging business and even
more years in ham radio I've seen it all. Dialing by sound is possible
but not terribly reliable. When there were still a lot of dial phones
around there were hand held boxes that played tones into the phone
mouthpiece to allow you to check your voicemail or send digits to a
pager. The ones that worked the best had nice sized speakers and a
rubber seal. Most of the time the problem was twist. The combination
of the speaker, the mouthpiece and the crummy phone line would make
the two tones arrive at the destination at unequal amplitude. Today's
DSP doesn't care much, but the toroid cores and finicky AGC of those
days couldn't handle much more than a few DB difference between the
tones.

- Ron

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