Talk:Dial tone/Archives/2012

Origin
The origin of the phrase dial tone lies in the original mechanical method of entering a telephone number that superseded speaking it to a live operator: a circular dial on the face of the phone, with small, finger-sized circular holes cut out around the periphery of the dial. Each hole was associated with a number or set of letters, in the same manner as on today's touch-tone buttons. To enter a number 4, for instance, the user would insert his or her finger in the hole over the numeral 4 and turn the dial until the finger encountered a metal stop, and then release. The dial generated electronic clicks that were transmitted, and the receiving equipment was able to interpret these clicks to decode the number that was "dialed." The "dial tone" was so named because it indicated that the phone service was ready to receive a dialed-in number. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AllenWatson (talk • contribs).

WP:ENGVAR edit war
This article has been back and forth between US and UK spelling many times. It has also at times been in a mix of the two, with rectifications of this fact wrongly reverted.

For the record:
 * Since its creation it's always been at the title "Dial tone", which is the usual US term - here in the UK, it's "dialling tone".
 * Looking through the page history, the first major contributor seems to have used US English.

As such, this article belongs in US English. But even so, there was a discussion some time ago which might affect whether it's sensible to change it back to US English now. Guess I need to have a good read of it when I've more time. But if somebody does change it back in the meantime, maybe we should have a comment at the top of the page to tell editors not to change it again. — Smjg (talk) 14:41, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I just went boldly through the article, changing to US English except where the the context immediately and explicitly has to do with UK dialling tone. I've also added a tag to the top of this talk page, indicating that the article is in US English. While I don't hold out much hope, perhaps it will remain stable in this condition for a while. __ Just plain Bill (talk) 20:37, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Dial tone & The President
Referring to the current paragraph:

"In the United States, dial tone was introduced in the 1940s, and became widespread in the 1950s. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower retired in 1961 it was nearly universal, but the president himself had not been confronted with a dial tone. When he picked up his own household phone his assistant had to explain what the strange noise was, as well as how to use a rotary dial phone."

I suggest that this section needs a complete rewrite, or possibly the reference to Pres. Eisenhower being removed altogether. For a start, dial tone was introduced in the U.S. much earlier than the 1940's, so the opening statement is completely wrong. Secondly, the cited reference in relation to the president seems more to do with him not having experienced automatic/dial service before (i.e. the references to his not knowing how to use the dial) than with dial tone per se.

As this paragraph stands at present, I feel it is rather misleading in that anyone without existing knowledge of the history is probably going to be left confused as to what exactly is being described. The anecdote about President Eisenhower would probably be better placed in an article about automatic/dial service, rather than one about dial tone specifically. 87.113.35.221 (talk) 12:42, 14 October 2012 (UTC)