My experiments with photography in 60's

My Encounter with a Rotary Dial Telephone (Late 1950s)

You know, having a telephone at home in the late fifties was a big deal.

Only senior officers, police officials,doctors, journalists or the really well-off families had one.

And those early phones weren’t like the ones with dials. Most were manual. You picked up the receiver, and a polite operator would come on the line and ask, “Number, please?” Then you’d tell him/her who you wanted to speak to, and he/she would connect you.

Naturally, I had no idea what a rotary dial phone looked like, let alone how to use one. I’d only heard they existed in places like Mumbai and Delhi. (Madras and Calcutta probably caught up a bit later.)

Then, sometime around 1959, my family was traveling from Bareilly to Bangalore. My cousin came along too. We stopped for a couple of days in Bombay—yes, it was still Bombay then—to stay with my mother’s uncle. He worked in the Telephone Department.

And that’s where the magic happened.

There, in his house in Matunga, stood a rotary dial telephone. A real one!
My cousin and I were mesmerized. We couldn’t take our eyes off it. All those holes and numbers—what a fascinating little machine! We observed how my mother's uncle did the dialling!

Of course, we didn’t dare touch it while the grown-ups were around. But when the coast was clear, we crept up to it like two little spies on a secret mission.

One of us picked up the receiver—heart pounding.
Then came the big question: Which number do we dial ?

We looked around and noticed a number printed right there on the dial: 471998.
Aha! The phone’s own number!

We exchanged a glance that said it all: “Shall we?”

And before we could think twice, we started dialing—slowly, carefully, one number after another.

Then we waited.
And waited some more.

Nothing. Just a strange, continuous tone.

We looked at each other in confusion. What on earth was that sound?

Of course, now I know—it was the busy tone. But back then, it felt like some mysterious code from the telephone world!

A bit of an anti-climax, perhaps—but to two curious kids in 1959, it was a grand little adventure.

Our first brush with modern technology—and a story that’s stayed with me ever since.