In the "old days" the had what were called party lines where you shared a line with?

Question

other users. I'm just curious how that worked & if people ever cussed each other out to get off the line? Lol.

Answer 1

Yes, you could get cussed out from the other "party".  If you were using the phone, the person(s) you shared the line with couldn't use the phone.  Some would try to listen in but you could usually tell they were on the line.

Answer 2

Its like a conference call now. They just called it party line.

Answer 3

Hi Susanna Kaysen:I would like to add my 2 cents worth.We had 10,8,4&2 party lines.The 10 party lines had 5 bells wired from TIP side to ground & 5 bells wired RING side to ground. Everyone on the TIP side heard all 5 rings.Everyone on the RING side heared all 5 rings.The rings were:2 shorts,3shorts,

4 shorts,a long&a short,&a long &2 shorts. The TIP parties did not hear the RING parties rings & visa versa.The more parties that got on the poorer the voice level. Before that was MANUAL CORD Switchboards. The parties were J,M,R &W but that is something else,The ringer is wired TIP or RING.  in series with a capacitor thru the switchook normal(ON HOOK) then to ground,yellow wire.Visit WEB Tribute to the Telephone (Google).I hope this is not too confusing.

exbelltel

Answer 4

party lines were where more than one "party" shared a telephone connection. These were usually out in the boonies where the telco did not have the infrastructure to provide a private line to every customer.

How they worked; your phone was "half tapped" and appeared at more than one location. The telco would send ringing voltage down one side or the other with respect to ground, to cause your phone to ring or the other party phone to ring. This is why the OLD residence wire had just three conductors, a talk pair - green/red, and ground, yellow.

One party could be your neighbor or could be across town.

Vocal arguements were common.

My aunt had a party line as late as 1960. She was located in Clermont Co OH.

Answer 5

When I was little we lived out in the country (middle of nowhere) and we had party lines.  Sometimes people did get really mad at their neighbors who wouldn't get off the line.  Mostly people were considerate of each other and wouldn't tie up the line if someone else needed it but not always.  

Someone said that it was like conference calls but it wasn't like that at all.  You shared a phone line with your neighbors.  I don't remember how many households shared a line but if your neighbor was on the phone and you picked up the phone to make a call you could hear their phone call.  If it was urgent you could ask them to finish up so you could use the phone.

Answer 6

I remember my Grandmother talking about party lines. I don't know exactly how they worked but it had to do with people sharing the same line somehow. She did tell me that if the phone was needed for an emergency, that is all they had to say so and other users had to get off of the lines. I doubt that there was much cursing as people were considerably more considerate in those days. On the other hand,  I am pretty sure there was some eavesdropping taking place too... LOL.

Answer 7

The precise details of how party lines were set up varied from place to place, since there were quite a number of different systems.  It was also the case that independent phone companies often used different arrangements from the Bell System.

What all systems had in common was the fact that two or more people shared a telephone line back to the central office (telephone exchange).    When any one party was using the phone, all the other numbers would be busy too, e.g. if party A was on the line then anyone trying to call party B would get a busy signal even though party B wasn't actually using his phone.    As you've already realized, it also meant that if any one party on the shared line was engaged on a call, anybody else picking up on that same party line could eavesdrop and join in the conversation.  

The main differences between the systems were in the number of parties per line and the arrangements for ringing the called party.   The basic 2-way party line generally had what was called fully selective ringing (as Bob described above), which means that your phone would only ever ring for your calls.    If you picked up when the other party was using the phone you would overhear his conversation, but you would not know when his phone was ringing.

4-way party lines could also be arranged for fully selective ringing, but partially selective ringing was also employed with coded ringing, typically either one long ring or two short rings.  So your phone would ring for both your calls and for calls to one of the other four parties on the line.  You just had to remember whether "your" ring was one long or two short.  The other two parties on the 4-way line would similarly have one long or two short rings, but you would never hear them.

The coded ringing principle was extended to allow for 8 and 10-way party lines, using different combinations of ring cadence:  long, short-short, long-short, short-short-short, etc., although a few places used tuned ringers and different frequency ring voltages to provide fully selective ringing on such large party lines.  

Although much rarer, there were even 20-way party lines in some very rural areas!

As for conflicts between users, they could happen if one person was noted for particularly long, chatty calls, or where somebody liked to eavesdrop to get all the local gossip.  It was often in the terms of service that calls should not exceed a certain length without a break of a minimum period to allow other parties use of the line.   Many jurisdictions actually had laws requiring a person to give up the line if another party on the line declared that it was needed for an emergency call.

The party line was essential to the plot of the 1959 movie "Pillow Talk," in which Doris Day shared a line with Rock Hudson.   You'll often find similar references to party lines in other movies of the era, such as the running gag in the 1962 film "Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation."

Party lines were used in many other parts of the world.  Huge multi-way party lines weren't that common here in the U.K. due to the much more compact nature of the country, but the basic 2-way party line was once very common here, and survived well into the 1980s.