Using A Rotary Phone As A Burglar Alarm

By Queuebot in Crime & Law, Gadgets, Hacks & Mods on Aug 16, 2009 at 2:17 am

Russell Neff has an ingenious homemade alarm system that costs him absolutely zero in monthly fees. You too can make one, if you only have a rotary phone …

He removed the receiver of his telephone and dialed all but one digit in his home telephone number. He then dialed the final digit, inserted a cork in the dial hole to keep the mechanism from returning and completing the connection.

Four strings were tied to the cork and strung at ankle level to different parts of the store.

At 2:15 a.m. Neff’s telephone roused him from a sound sleep. He lifted the receiver and heard noises, dressed and drove six blocks to a service station at Lexington and Larpenteur Avs., where he called police.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Minnesotastan.

Tags: crime, Russell Neff, telephone

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Chucky
Aug 16th, 2009 at 3:10 am
I wish i had thought of that 85 years ago.
UnreaL
Aug 16th, 2009 at 6:30 am
I’m not too sure about this. Once you take the phone off hook and start dialing a number, the phone exchange will not wait for you indefinitely to complete dialing your number – after some time you’ll get an error or busy signal. Otherwise you would be reserving the resources of the phone system for no use. Possibly some places don’t have this sort of timeout in place, but I would bet it was more an anomaly than the norm.
bud
Aug 16th, 2009 at 9:37 am
With todays electronic switching, even with a phone line that still accepts rotary clicks rather than tones, lines will disconnect themselves after a given period of time; you cannot be perpetually in mid dial.

In the days of electomechanical switching there would still be a physical switch waiting for that last number, but routine and regular maintenance of the system would free up the line. Because in those days, an actual electromechanical circuit representing the number, waiting for the last digit to fall, would be tied up, and capacity of the system would be hindered.

So I have to vote apocrryphal on this as well. Maybe Snopes should investigate.
Foreigner1
Aug 16th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Depends on the type of switchboard. In 1959 when this happened UnreaL…, this guy had the luck that where he lived they had a by then already oldfashioned mechanical switchboard without time-release switches on it.
zoomba
Aug 16th, 2009 at 11:52 am
Why did he have to drive 6 blocks to call the police? He clearly has a working home phone. Couldn’t he just hang up and call the police from his house?
Foreigner1
Aug 16th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Again, but now at zoomba- Read.

This was in Nineteen Fifty Nine.

Back then there were no mobile phones yet. And not everyone had telephone in their own house- To expensive and if you could afford one, you’d have that one installed in your shop, like this dude. And even if he had applied for a telephone in his house, he’d most likely was placed on a waitinglist for the next 2 or 3 years. And so he probably had to go to the nearest phonebooth.
Bret Hammond
Aug 16th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I knew a guy who did the same thing when his office was repeatedly broken into. Of course, this was the 80′s. The string was tied to the doorknob, and when the burglar broke in he completed the final number.
Christophe
Aug 16th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Don’t you usually attach the string to a grenade’s pin?
SenorMysterioso
Aug 16th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
and a shotgun trigger

I think the fact that he had to go to another location to call was because of the switchboard. The call probably had to be ended on both ends.
ted
Aug 17th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Why is this being reported as current, when it took place 50 years ago?

We’ve had out-of-date articles from Neatorama before, but seriously…
ivy
Aug 23rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Is this true? If it is, well it is such an amazing idea. Anyhow,if your concer will just be for saving money, you just need to find out the best phone systems with cost effective prices available for you. For more options, you can check on :
Phone System
Elk M1
Dec 8th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
Clever use of the day’s technology – of course leaving the phone off the hook near a bell by the door would have worked as well, but I suppose it would have tied up his phone line then. Nice find!

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