The evening current events show As it Happens on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports that American engineer Justine Haupt is the creator of a rotary-dial mobile phone.
Listen to the full 5m39s radio interview or read a shortened transcript on-line.
Justine Haupt, who created her own cellphone with a rotary dial, said she did so because she doesn't like how hyper-connected people have become in the world of smartphones.
"You can't browse the internet, it can't text, and all of that is intentional because I have a problem with how hyper-connected everyone is nowadays.
[...]Haupt, a 34-year-old space engineer, explains that although the phone operates on a 3G cellular network, it is not a smartphone.
"It's as un-smart as it can be, intentionally."
Haupt aims to use the phone on a daily basis and tried to make it as compact as possible, so it could fit in a pocket.
The phone does integrate some modern features, such as programmable shortcut buttons for calling specific numbers, a power switch, and a curved e-paper screen that displays basic information such as missed calls.
Though only briefly mentioned in the interview, the phone incorporates open source hardware from Adafruit Industries.
Full project description and documentation can be found on Haupt's webpage: http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/index.html
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Monday February 17 2020, @02:08AM (6 children)
Absolute bonus if it's using Asterisk and a custom miniature ATA so you can hear the pulses and it actually works exactly like a rotary dial.
This probably just converts the pulses to digital.
Either way, I want one of these. Hell of a conversation piece.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 17 2020, @02:23AM (2 children)
Heh, I've got one of the ancient wooden ones where the mic is on the base and the earpiece is what you pick up that I've been planning to do this with for a house phone. It's just never made it to the top of the projects list yet.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday February 17 2020, @02:43AM
Same here. I saw a really nice one in thrift shop, but it was too expensive. The components are so small these days it's easily possible.
It's on the top of a short list of what I want to do, should I get the time and resources.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:33AM
Found a Stromberg Carlson Type G shipboard phone, surplus in the '70s. It was brand new, must have cost the Navy a pretty penny, just like this one:
https://www.auctionzip.com/auction-lot/Internal-Ship-Telephone-USS-Roanoke_7CAF24E1CF/ [auctionzip.com]
The stainless steel cover plate is 1/8" thick, as is the rest of the grey painted box, weighs a ton, the phone is explosion proof. Used it for years as my main phone. Once we had an electronic exchange that could accept faster pulses I hot-rodded the dial (tied down the internal speed governor) to speed up dialing about 2x. But eventually I got tired of waiting for the higher numbers to rewind, and tired of the callus on my dialing finger--switched to touch tone dialing.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 17 2020, @05:11PM
I get that the rotary experience is a unique experience. I just don't see why you would willingly go backwards in functionality. I can press a single button to make a phone call with speed dial. Why would I want to take 10+ seconds to dial one number? On the other hand, I would be in favor of relegating all spam callers to the use of a rotary dial telephone/cellphone.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @07:34PM (1 child)
I'd LOVE to take this and mount it in the sole of one of my dress shoes.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @01:36AM
The Moders.. Need to: Get Smart
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_Smart/ [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @02:23AM (1 child)
Look at her, she really is one of us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:05AM
Quick, get her an SN login! How about "rotarydial" ...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @03:33AM (13 children)
Back in the day, if you were really good with your timing, you could "rotary dial" numbers by tapping on the phone receiver - basically hanging up for a few tens of milliseconds for each tick of the dial, so: to dial 555-1212, you would tap out a pattern like ..... ..... . .. . .. , which is all that the rotary piece was doing for you: mechanically winding back from the position you dialed to and sending those pulses down the line to the switching office.
Even more surreal, back in the switching office were these big mechanical rotary switches that would rotate ~30 degrees for each "tick" received on the line, so as the dial was winding down on your home phone, a corresponding rotary switch was rotating just like it in the switching office. The phone company built these huge, very noisy inside, buildings to handle the switching traffic, after they laid off all the human operators that would do the call routing via patchboards full of phone plug sockets. By the 1990s they were replacing the last of the mechanical switching offices with modern electronic switches - doing the work of a big building in a box about the size of a full tower PC...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:49AM (1 child)
The name was Strowger--the inventor of the big switches, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch [wikipedia.org]
Old footage of a small exchange is here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcvA5q8yOTo [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @04:26AM
When I was studying digital tech in college, the last "aha" moment was for multiplexer memory addressing. I had this mental block, there must be some simple trick to enable addressing all the tens of thousands (in those days) of different memory addresses. Nope, it's multiplexers all the way down, to address a 64K (16 bit) memory you need one 1:2 multiplexer to address the first bit, two more to address the next bit, four more to address the third, etc. all the way to the 16th bit, basically: about as much addressing circuitry as there is memory circuitry.
In phone-land these switches are 1:10 multiplexers, but... they still needed a LOT of them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by edIII on Monday February 17 2020, @03:50AM (5 children)
I got a really cool tech support story regarding one of those. An old friend of mine was doing "IT" work during this time, if you call working on those switches Internet anything :)
Problem was a gentleman in Los Angeles trying to reach his mother every night. It was important that he do it, and he did it every day, and roughly the same time. Within minutes. A very punctual individual. This resulted in a very reproducible error developing whereby the gentleman dialed his mother, but was connected to some other house. It was regular, repeatable, and bizarre. Nobody was understanding it for weeks till my friend overheard the problem.
My friend asked one question: "Does it hit the same number every time it makes a mistake?" Answer: "YES! How did you know that!"
He told them to go the building for the mother's switch, go to a specific rotary switch on a panel, take out your screwdriver pen, gently twist a few degrees. That's it. The heat from hot afternoons was expanding the metal in the rotary switch, just enough, that while at a certain temperature it was overshooting enough and sliding into the number just above it. Like clockwork, for weeks once the summer started, but only for the small time window in which this man called his mother.
It was quite a Sherlock moment in the office on that afternoon :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:04AM (3 children)
Engaging pedantry subroutine...
IT is short for Information Technology, not Internet Technology. As such, using IT to describe such stuff is absolutely apropos.
Returning success code...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM
Possible, but unlikely, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Information+Technology&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CInformation%20Technology%3B%2Cc0 [google.com]
Information Technology didn't come into use until ~1960, if this can be believed.
More likely the clever person was a phone repair guy...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:22AM
Not so, it will be CT, Communications Technology.
If only it was a thing... :D
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology [wikipedia.org]
CYA
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:20AM
Engaging power circuit shutoff...
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM
Switching offices in Florida were air conditioned - heavily.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by bradley13 on Monday February 17 2020, @06:40AM (1 child)
Yeah, as a kid I used to dial numbers like that.
Anyhow, it's a cool project. Not for me, though, as I rarely make phone calls. Texts, messages, emails - but I dislike interrupting/being interrupted, which is what phone calls do.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:10AM
Fascinating story bro - let me know when you write your memoirs.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 17 2020, @02:01PM
Feasible here too, I had discovered it by myself after accidentally dialing and listening to the phone system reply. Another older girl which reportedly used a trick to defeat the lock put on her rotary by her parents was probably doing the same. Bit of a problem girl TBH.
Old landlines were bad for sound quality but suffered basically no lag. Phone calls are more awkward because of lag nowadays.
Back to the topic. I like the idea and the execution of this actually mobile phone.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:52PM
In my experience I didn't have to be really good with the timing. I think that's because not all rotary phones have the same timing? And some people try to forcibly speed up the dial rotation?
Or maybe the phone exchanges I tried it on were more forgiving than the ones you used?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 17 2020, @06:34PM
I remember when I was a child playing one day with the receiver and just tapping out random sequences - wasn't trying to do anything except figure out why the dial tone would go away and then come back again, and trying to figure out how long it would take for it to get back to the dial tone. Must've either done ten in a row or hit some other magic switching sequence because eventually an operator got on the line and asked me who I was... she then proceeded to tell me sternly to get off the line. So I did.
This sig for rent.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:39AM (12 children)
"This" - which? There is no antecedent to the title. There is no "this"
"New York Woman" - who gives a fuck? Did her ovaries make it work? Does that fact that she's in New York make it work? It's bullshit.
Better title:
"Engineer builds rotary-dial celphone"
Shorter, higher relevance, looks less like clickbait from Huffington .... oh, wait....
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @05:28AM
A couple more titles like this and I'm outta here.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 17 2020, @05:29AM (8 children)
It's something of a fluff piece. "New York Woman" is warmer and fuzzier than "an engineer". What are you, anti-social? Even I can relate to "New York Woman" a little better than "some fucking no-name engineer from nowhere".
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:37AM
Understandable. A woman that doesn't hold the reins of the home you live in is always better than 'an engineer'.
Don't get high hopes, you aren't gonna fuck this one neither.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @03:28PM
Not anti-social. Just more interested in signal than noise.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @01:53AM
Finally rinaway gets woke!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Arik on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:32PM (4 children)
When I read "New York Woman" the association that comes most readily to mind is that of a pampered, privileged woman wearing enough designer crap to buy a coal miners house, screeching profanity at said coal miner and telling him to 'learn to code.' A person you don't want to engage in conversation because she's just going to start screaming and spitting at you the moment you say anything she doesn't like.
"Engineer" is much more relatable. That word refers to a human who has made a study of what we once called 'the useful arts.' Someone that builds and fixes useful things. Someone that's used to having real conversations about real things, and is very unlikely to spit on you for any reason.
In fact, this "New York Woman" turns out to be an "engineer" as well - at least, that's her job title at the LSST, I didn't stalk her long enough to confirm or deny if she's licensed and bonded as a proper engineer or not but it certainly seems to give a much more accurate synopsis of her than the line they went with instead.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 18 2020, @04:41PM (3 children)
Hmmm. Your ethnocentricity is showing a little there. We have a "New York woman" right here on SN, did you know that? 'Zumi is from Queens, I believe. Jamaica? I suppose that if you've never met any women from some place, they can't mean much to you. Yeah, I met one of those pampered, privileged women you mention. For every one of those, there are tens of thousands of real people in New York. And, a few of them are actually damned nice people, too!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday February 18 2020, @05:11PM
And it's just not informative or useful, aside from the possibility of the inference above. It tells us nothing of any real relevance about her. As you say, all kinds of women live in New York and membership in that class is therefore not a reliable indicator of anything important, it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the story at hand. A/S/L is relevant in a very narrow set of circumstances, and the lady in question is happily married, so this isn't it.
"Engineer" would have at least been relevant.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday February 18 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 19 2020, @12:10AM
The word was meant to show that you identify readily with "engineers", and not with "New York woman". ;^)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @06:06AM
How about "A cosmopolitan Jewish princess"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday February 17 2020, @01:55PM
Outrageous, I tell you. Ask for refund!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Monday February 17 2020, @05:32AM (1 child)
Though the rotary dial is a bit much for me, personally. I would prefer buttons. Nice raised buttons in a thoughtful layout so they can be worked by feel.
Touch screens are abominations.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:59AM
I kinda wonder what happens the first time she tries to take this thing on a flight, even in checked baggage. Or if she tries to take it through any kind of security check. (Court house, amusement park, etc).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday February 17 2020, @06:56AM
Most impressive hack I've seen in a long time, even without the e-ink display which raises this thing from totally awesome to a legitimate object of idolatry.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by darkfeline on Monday February 17 2020, @11:45AM (3 children)
I like how it is stated
> I have a problem with how hyper-connected everyone is nowadays
as a matter of fact. Such a statement wouldn't be amiss during earlier rejections of intellectualism.
Greater access to information is a good thing. Idolatry of ignorance is ass backward and seemingly always occurs when humans are struggling to adapt to overwhelming change. It's comforting to stick one's head in the sand and dream of simpler times.
It's true that the information age has challenged our ability to cope with large amounts of information, but the path of progress lies not with the side trying to return to ignorance. We will learn how to best use our new technology, just as we have in the past.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @05:52PM
But if we went backwards we could make America great again. Take our country back. Long live the King!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday February 17 2020, @07:46PM
What if the screen is propagating ignorance and not information?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday February 18 2020, @03:10PM
But they aren't, in this case, and it isn't about something so simple as greater or lesser access to information.
When your every move is tracked, for instance, that doesn't necessarily give you any extra information at all. It's giving someone else, someone unknown, someone who certainly doesn't have your best interests in mind, all that information. It's not necessarily helpful to you at all, could turn positively harmful and probably will, but on the other hand it /is/ necessarily harmful to society as a whole, to the species, even if it somehow benefits you personally.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday February 17 2020, @12:38PM (2 children)
I guess the next version might have to work a bit on the battery life, about 2h probably isn't that useful for a wearable device or daily usage for most people.
If it could text I guess sending an SMS via the rotary would have been an interesting experience.
(Score: 4, Informative) by shortscreen on Monday February 17 2020, @01:38PM (1 child)
The 2 hour figure was for an early version, the final build was stated to last nearly 24 hours (not amazing but comparable to other smartphones)
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Monday February 17 2020, @01:58PM
The other phones cook something all the time. What does the rotary king do? Because if all that power goes out as RF radiation I won't recommend keeping it nearby.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @07:59PM
and especially for publishing all the juicy details. looks like a fun project.