h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes we still call it dialing a number but here in N. America the dial has long gone, replaced with buttons. Gone too are the clattering, humming electro-mechanical telephone exchanges. My work (air condtioning repair) sometimes took me into these large but crowded buildings filled with the sound of the switches pulsing in time to the output of the dials of thousands of telephones. If you are of a certain age you will remember the pulsing you heard each time you released the dial of the phone, the quiet clicks adding up to the number in which you had placed your finger to wind up the dial to the stop. The old exchanges repeated that rhythm but louder and in a chorus of voices scattered near and far, loud and soft, around a huge room of racks and wires and mechanisms. Nearby, you heard a nine, over to the left a series of quick twos, in the distance a seven counted out, then the switch nearby pulsed out an answering seven. A facinating beat of commuincation technology, it was like being in a jungle filled with the calls of strange mechanical birds.
The machines were tended by technicians wandering around on missions of maintence and repair. I'm told one of the jobs involved using a fine file to clean the contact points of the switches. Imagine thousands of contacts all needing a swipe or two of a file! Constant if somewhat boring employment.
Now the exchanges are largely empty except for a rack of electronic panels in a corner doing twice the work of the equipment that used to fill the whole building with noise. Reliable, efficient, rather pretty with flashing lights and all but not nearly as memorable.

I live in Bulgaria, where the old mechanical exchanges are currently being replaced. There is still a large number of those, and people who live near the buildings still constantly hear the clickety-click kind of noise


Petkan

I would expect that the neighbours around the exchanges will have a few poor nights sleep until they get used to the lack of a relay clatter lullaby each night.