Wood Counselling Required, UK!

Everyone on a party line had their own ring and all of the neighbors knew everyone elses ring.

 

It was not just the person receiving the call that you could ID. Each person turned the crank a bit differently and once you had listened to it a bit you could tell my way of cranking from yours It sounded different depending on how long is a long, how long is a short, how much time between long and short cranks, how fast are you moving the handle, etc. A hand cranked ring is very distinctive and very personal once you catch on. That means that you know it is me calling and the long/short ring codes told you who I was calling.
How did we get sidetracked on this subject anyway?

 

Phones on multi party lines had a hand crank so you could ring other people on the same line. It basically turned a little generator that put ring tone out on the line. Since it was an AC generator you could hear how fast it was being turned. If you watch old 1940s movies you will see people cranking on a hand crank, but usually just a very long single crank which was a call to the operator. If you were getting a long distance call, the operator would use a mechanical generator to make the ring pattern and then everyone on the line knew it was an incoming long distance call so sometimes there were so many listening in it became hard to actually hear the conversation yourself.
I have no idea where the crank call expression came from.

 

If I hadn't visited my grandparents out on the farm I would not have known much about it, but my grandmother used to say things like so and so is calling such and such neighbor. If it was likely to be good gossip she would pick up the phone to listen in.

 

Blimey, you guys don't use hand cranked phones anymore?! We've really got some catching up to do..;-)

 

No, no more hand cranks. We moved to two soup cans connected by a string, then a while back we cut the string, so the soup cans are now "wireless"

 

And one more thing for the younger generation to know, making phone calls after 9 or 10 PM was frowned upon because you might be waking up the operator. This was in a town of 200 people.