Word: dial
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...abandoned exercise cycle and at right angles to a gun rack, responds to the caller, voice to voice, and makes the requested connection by hand. If nobody picks up the phone, she will report "d.a." (doesn't answer). None of the nervously informing burps and buzzes of a dial system are available to the user of the crank phone. It is an eminently human...
...this homey and tenuous network tore apart, and the town with it, when the new owner, the Oxford County Telephone & Telegraph Co., announced it was replacing crank with dial. Before you could say d.a., a "Don't Yank the Crank" committee was formed. T shirts displaying that motto went on sale in Brad Hooper's village store. There were town meetings and more town meetings. Lawyers were hired, and briefs got filed with the public utilities commission to prevent the conversion to dial, and even void the sale...
...past president of Maine's League of Women Voters, Johnson argues for a political compromise. Why not both dial and crank? Her defense of the crank is deliberately unsentimental. She quotes praise from a computer programmer: "It's so old it's in the advance guard." But behind the crisp march of her logic, Johnson dreams of a Bryant Pond for her daughters, now 6 and 8, almost as idyllic as the Bryant Pond of Elden's childhood...
...public utilities commission is reviewing the sale a second time, and is still trying to decide whether a dual system of crank and dial would be practical. But meanwhile, what a strain it all is, living out a parable of progress-or not-progress-with its neat jinglejangle and the whole world watching...
...long ago, picking what shows to watch on TV was an easy flick of the dial. There were three networks and scattered independent stations to choose from. Today, especially in the nation's 31 million cable-TV households, up to dozens of alternative channels can be available. To help the viewer keep track, numerous directories have been put out by cable-system owners, specialized pay-cable channels and independent entrepreneurs. In addition, many newspapers now carry cable channels in daily listings and Sunday TV supplements, as do some regional editions of TV Guide...