Talk:2272: Ringtone Timeline

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Doing the Title Text. “That Guy from the Netherlands” (talk) 18:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

What about the era of "I would love to set my phone to a traditional ringing sound but this weird space garbage is the closest my phone will get"? 173.245.54.61 18:53, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I've got my smartphone set to the classic monophoncic Nokia 3310 tune. You can easily tell the >25y from the <25y generation apart from their reaction. -- //gir.st/ (talk) 19:22, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if Randal actually found some data to support his timeline or if it's more of a general observation made by him. In my subjective experience, the trend towards having the phone on vibrate all the time has been going on since at least 2017-2018 rather than the future/present time indicated in his timeline. Bischoff (talk) 19:41, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Early ringers were hand-cranked generators (or perhaps magnetos), so you might be able to tell who was calling by how fast they cranked.172.68.206.22 19:51, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

No, in that period it was mostly still operators. I suppose you would know which operator was on duty, if your area was small enough. SDSpivey (talk) 22:07, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Party lines shared the signal and differentiated the callee by ring. I grew up on 19-ring-12, i.e. line 19 (on the manual switchboard in the village) ringing one long and two short. There was a magneto, but you used it to request the operator to give you a line for an outgoing call; it signaled the switchboard, not another party.

I remember around 1982 staying over at a friend's house and hearing the electronic tweedling of their new landline phone and not knowing what it was. Prior to that all the phones I'd heard at homes, businesses, school, etc. were all normal ringers. So the cool space beeps starting around 1996 seems skewed to the right by about a decade. 172.68.38.124 20:21, 24 February 2020 (UTC)Pat

There's obviously plenty of overlap, and I think the boxes represent when a particular style was prevalent, not the entire duration. Barmar (talk) 20:37, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


Interesting contrast to xkcd 479. LHN