Comments on: Using A Rotary Phone As A Burglar Alarm

By: Elk M1

Elk M1 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:20:39 +0000

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!

By: ivy

ivy — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:12:08 +0000

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By: ted

ted — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 16:09:11 +0000

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We’ve had out-of-date articles from Neatorama before, but seriously…

By: SenorMysterioso

SenorMysterioso — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:05:05 +0000

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.

By: Christophe

Christophe — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:31:33 +0000

Don’t you usually attach the string to a grenade’s pin?

By: Bret Hammond

Bret Hammond — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:18:57 +0000

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.

By: Foreigner1

Foreigner1 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 18:13:01 +0000

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.

By: zoomba

zoomba — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:52:50 +0000

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?

By: Foreigner1

Foreigner1 — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:44:22 +0000

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.

By: bud

bud — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 14:37:00 +0000

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.

By: UnreaL

UnreaL — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:30:50 +0000

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.

By: Chucky

Chucky — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 08:10:43 +0000

I wish i had thought of that 85 years ago.