8 thoughts on “The iPhone of 1967”

1. Hey, some of us still remember those. Big improvement over the old black bulky handset. Then someone mentioned that the phones were going wireless, no way jack. What will they think of next?

2. Yeah, and you had to “rent” your phone from the phone company. You couldn’t just buy a phone and plug it in. Just like getting a new iPhone for “free,” you paid something extra every month to have one of these.

3. And it was just a few years after that that touch-tone phones were available. The first place they were offered was somewhere in Pennsylvania, in fall 1963, but I don’t think they were available in Utah for some time after that. Since it cost an extra $1.50 per month–which was likely more than a 10% increase from the usual bill–my parents stayed with rotary dial phones for years after everybody else (it seemed) had them.

4. What is this iPhone you speak of?

   Posted from Carrier Pigeon

5. I learned to “dial” phone numbers on a phone like this, and although we got a touch-tone phone in the mid-’80s, the rotary model survived well into the ’90s as the “extension” that a second person could talk on when the grandparents called. I think it was eventually replaced by something wireless, but it lasted a good long time.

6. We didn’t get our first Touch-Tone phone until at least into the 80s, but they seem to have been common by then, even in Idaho. I remember a guest at my sister’s birthday party going off to call her parents and coming back to ask, “how do your work your phone?” Apparently she’d never seen a rotary dial before.

   My grandmother in Utah kept her big black AT&T phone well into the 80s.

7. Mid ’80s makes me wonder if the extra charge for touch tone went away when Ma Bell got broken up.

8. My phone is still a touch phone, since carrying a cell phone is an invitation for me to absent-mindedly take it into my secured office. Which would lead to an unpleasant character-building experience.

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