this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions
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If you’re talking about this thing, it serves two purposes. It is the hook that opens and closes the line (hangs up and picks up the phone), and it is used by this thing
to keep the handset from falling off the base when it’s mounted on a wall.
Or maybe you meant this thing. Yeah, it keeps the handset in when the base is mounted vertical. You can see that it’s slanted in the back.
That’s so it slides in and out on this other slanted lip on the handset instead of getting caught on it. You can take the handset off just by pulling it directly away from the wall.
Exactly this. It’s called a “hook” and when the phone is “off the hook” that’s the thing it is off of. Being off the hook means the phone is powered up and connected to the local loop. When the phone is “on hook” that means it is disconnected from the loop and awaiting the pulsed ring signal.
Desk phones have a reversible hook so that it keeps the button depressed when the phone is in the cradle but doesn’t catch when you attempt to pick it up.
On modem signals in the old days, the + was equivalent to “flashing” the hook, or quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the loop, and the AT command H1 told the modem to go “on hook” while H0 told it to go “off hook”.
Back before the DTMF network, when everyone used pulse modulated phones, the “pulses” were caused by going in and off hook in a specific pattern. You could actually make a phone call from a rotary payphone by flashing the hook in the pattern that mimicked the rotary dial pulsing the line as it rotated back to home position.
In the really old days, the hand crank served much the same purpose, but actually supplied electricity to the local loop; when the phone was on hook (which was a big metal thing the earpiece sat in) someone else turning the crank would make all the phones on the loop ring; you picked up if the ring matched the number of rings for your extension.
Me, deep in the night, reading about modem signals and off the hook. I love forum threads. They have taught me more than I can imagine.