[eltonioni]

If Blue Monday is getting you down, this will either cheer you up or depress you a bit more.

[Chris Martyr]

Shouldn't there be an 'app' for that ?

[lobstaboy]

Very funny!
But what was depressing wasn't that they hadn't much of a clue how it worked, but how dreadful their problem solving skills were - basically they just mucked about with it.
Of course you can do that with a computer game - if you muck about with it you get some sort of feedback whatever you do, but good old fashioned steam driven stuff isn't like that.
So basically were all doomed...

[romille]

Funny but very concerning!

[Miscellaneous]

It reminded me of watching chimps being filmed during problem solving experiments, accept the chimps would have done better!

[stevelup]

They had absolutely no feedback though, so it would have been pretty difficult to undertake methodical troubleshooting.

If something was reading back the dialled numbers to them, they would have quickly figured it out.

[Bill Haddow]

Looked staged to me. Plus I find it hard to believe that they haven't seen old films / TV programmes with rotary dials being used.

Bill H

[Bill McCarthy]

A sound powered telephone is simpler, but I doubt that they could crack that either.

[PeteSpencer]

They had absolutely no feedback though, so it would have been pretty difficult to undertake methodical troubleshooting.

If something was reading back the dialled numbers to them, they would have quickly figured it out.

Maybe if they'd held the handset to their ears they'd have heard/counted the pulsed clicks.

(used to get free phone calls from the old Button A & B phone boxes as a kid by rapidly tapping the handset rest the requisite number of times)
I guess that dates me.

Peter

[flybymike]

I used to do the same thing from the local phone box. Quite frequently we would get through to the GPO engineer who would threaten to send the rozzers round to lock us all up.

[PaulB]

(used to get free phone calls from the old Button A & B phone boxes as a kid by rapidly tapping the handset rest the requisite number of times)
I guess that dates me.

How many teenagers could you get into a GPO phone box to listen to "dial-a-disc" in that way?

Quite a few, it turns out!

[Flying_john]

Tap Tap tap,

You could dial the number using that method too - but numbers using lots of ones and twos were easier !

[PaulB]

Tap Tap tap,

You could dial the number using that method too - but numbers using lots of ones and twos were easier !

Dial-a-disc (it seemed so modern at the time) was 16 and dialled using the tap-tap method - not by me of course... it was naughty!!

[Flying_john]

There was another number I remember that you could tap in and, one minute later, the phone would ringback. Be surprised how many passers by would go in and answer it !

[PaulB]

Oh, gosh... I used to do that to my Mum and then one day the GPO engineer rang up as asked her to stop doing it!!