The Michael Berry Show is sponsored by The Rotary Phone.

A Rotary Dial is part of old school phones and telephone switchboards that uses something called pulse dialing to make a call.

Basically, when you need to call someone, you use the rotary dial to send the phone number to the phone exchange.

Here's how it works. The dial is set up in a circle with little holes for each number.

You stick your finger in the hole for the number you want to dial.

Then turn the dial clockwise until you hit this little stopper called a finger stop.

Once you let it go, the dial spins back to its starting position

thanks to a spring inside.

While it spins back, it makes a series of clicks.

These clicks are actually electrical pulses.

Depending on how far you turn the dial, the number of pulses changes.

The phone system listens to these pulses and figures out which number you dialed. The first patent for a rotary dial was issued to

one Alman Strowger on November 29, 1892. It wasn't until 1904, though, that the version were familiar with, the ones with the holes in the fingerwheel, came into the picture.

Although some independent telephone companies used it, it didn't really catch on with the Bell System in the United States until the early 1920s.

From the 1960s, the scene started to change as rotary dials were slowly replaced by the new

kid on the block.

Dual-tone multi-frequency push push button dialing. This new technology

which used a keypad of buttons instead of a dial first wowed the public at the

1962 World's Fair where it was introduced as touch tone.

On a personal note, my grandma had a rotary phone hanging on her kitchen wall by the

back door until she passed in 1996.

It had this 10-foot cord so that my aunts could sit outside and talk on private to their

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