On this day in history, who remembers using one of these?
After the invention of the telephone, there was a time when a line had to be provided, usually by the customer, to every phone you wanted to call from your phone to theirs. That is until three Swedish inventors living in Lindsborg KS (just south of where we used to live in Kansas) invented a switching system that would allow a phone to connect to up to 100 others. And that capability led to their desire to figure out... a way that the caller could connect to other phones instead of having to wait for an operator to be on duty or use a cumbersome and often faulty push button system. And by the mid 1890's they had developed the first dial telephone.
On August 20, 1896, they applied for a patent on their first working dial telephone that could connect to a 100 other phones and the rest, as they say, is history.
It's hard to imagine that every dial telephone now in use is an antique.
Absolutely, I remember when push button phones were kind of cool.
I WAS going to the first page of that OP and hitting Quick Reply and posting my daily quote. I began doing that when I was part of the staff and had little time to make posts. Now I have more time and I don't need that OP anymore. 
Cool how things work out when least expected. 
