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Twenty Thousand Hertz

Phone Tones: The hidden language of phone number beeps

Twenty Thousand Hertz

Dallas Taylor

Music, Design, Arts, Music Commentary

4.84.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We unpack how touch tone dialing changed communication forever. Join us on a deep, quirky dive into telephone history. We’ll also deconstruct these sounds and reveal their hidden brilliance. Featuring author Annabel Dodd and telephone aficionado Jim Hebbeln of the Telecommunications History Group.  20K is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.  Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Watch our video shorts on YouTube, and join the discussion on Reddit and Facebook. Become a monthly contributor at 20k.org/donate.  If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org.  Check out Pessimists Archive wherever you get your podcasts.  Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/phonetones  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

One of the best choices I ever made for my health was prioritizing regular checkups,

0:05.7

because when it comes to health, knowledge is power.

0:09.2

Fortunately, ZockDok makes booking a doctor a breeze.

0:12.5

Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoch.com slash Hertz to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today.

0:20.0

That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash H-E-R-T-Z.

0:24.3

Zocdoc.,000 Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

0:49.3

The sound of a number being dialed on a telephone is instantly recognizable.

0:55.0

But nowadays, how often do you really hear those sounds?

0:59.0

When we call a friend, we just scroll down to their contact.

1:02.0

When we call a business, we Google it.

1:04.0

Tap the phone number and tap to call.

1:06.0

Or we just ask our phone to call it for us.

1:08.0

Calling Music Millennium.

1:10.0

Up until pretty recently, every call you made meant dialing all 10 digits of a phone number,

1:15.7

one button at a time.

1:17.6

And that meant hearing those tones over and over.

1:20.7

If there was a phone number that you dialed a lot, like your best friend or your parents,

1:24.7

you'd eventually memorize what their numbers sounded like.

1:27.7

Strung together, the tones would start to sound almost musical,

1:31.1

like a jingle you couldn't forget, even if you tried.

1:39.2

But before we can jump into the push-button phones that most of us are familiar with,

1:43.6

we need to go back to the very beginning.

...

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