WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Brace yourselves, we're about to get into
some serious detail about telephone systems.

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I'm at the Museum of Communications in Seattle,
to answer a question:

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in old Hollywood films, when someone is on
a phone call and they got hung up on,

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why did they hear a dial tone?

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[dial tone]

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"Well, you can stick your well-laid plan up
your well-laid ass." [dial tone]

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Supervision is the word that describes how
a telephone switch

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knows whether the calling and called parties
are on hook or off hook.

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When you end a call and hang up,

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the equipment receives that on-hook signal,

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and anything that was in service at that time

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disconnects and goes back to its normal state.

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So you end up with dead air.

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Now, the reason that a sound director would
use a dial tone

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instead of just nothing is kind of obvious,
right?

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It's to make it clear that the other side
has hung up.

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That's certainly what lots of people argue
online.

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Except they could just do that by using one
short sound effect.

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And sometimes, they do.

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"Don't ever call me again."

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[rattling click]

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"Wow!

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I...

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I guess you're home."

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"Good luck."

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[rattling click]

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It turns out there's another reason.

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Back in the days of celluloid film,

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southern California was one of the few places
in America

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with independent telephone companies,

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not part of the giant Bell monopoly that handled
the rest of the country.

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Well, behind us is a step-by-step system

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and it's a relative of the telephone systems

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that were used in most of southern California.

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The Bell system didn't have as much of a monopoly
there.

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As I dial a number, various elements of the
step connect me

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through the system from start to finish.

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And that's where it got the name step-by-step.

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As I finish dialling, the call will connect...

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[ringing]

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...and it can be answered.

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Now, in the step system, it doesn't have what's
called 'far-end supervision'.

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And that means that the called party can hang
up and pick up again

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as many times as they want, and the call won't
disconnect.

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But if the calling party hangs up...

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[dial tone]

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...the called party will get hit with dial
tone right away

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because the system doesn't know whether I've
been hung up on

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or whether I've just picked up the phone.

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So in Hollywood, where all of the movies were
being written and filmed,

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their experience on the telephone was actually
different

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from most of the rest of America, and the
world.

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Which, let's be honest, is kind of like so
many other things in Hollywood.

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The bottom line is:

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the folks making the movies really did get
a dial tone when they were hung up on,

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at least sometimes, so they put that in their
films.

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Or they picked whichever option worked best
for the scene.

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If it's still happening when a character uses
a cell phone, though?

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That's just lazy.

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Thank you to all the team at Seattle's wonderful
Museum of Communications!

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You can check out their YouTube channel over
here

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or pull down the description for a link to
the Museum and to see their opening hours

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and a list of all the incredible equipment
they've got here.