What was before the telephone bell? Pencils and Hammers

Great article! I really love electro-mechanical designs from the birth of electronics up to the 1960s. Using a little hammer to strike two bells is such a simple, cool, and intuitive design. Today it would be replaced with a piezo buzzer or speaker which works, but isn't nearly as interesting.

You don't really see cool little designs like that anymore - it's all almost all digital now. Though I will say YIGs and RF designs are pretty cool in terms of combining mechanical with electrical elements. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I miss when electronics weren't so standardized. Tube amps, flip displays, tube displays, etc.

In The Idea Factory (about Bell Labs) they describe another common method being to shout "Ahoy!" into the phone and hope that this gets the attention of someone near the receiving telephone. I just love the mental picture I get from that.

On the other hand, this forced people to make written appointments for calls. Sometimes I wish that happened more often.

> When the caller operated the Buzzer, it made a sound (at the called side) quite like the horseradish grater automobile signal... and it aroused just the same feeling of resentment which that does.

I would love to hear it!