Phones may be in your pocket now but before that most houses had a phone plugged in to a wall. There have been a lot of different kinds of phones over the years – ask your grown-ups what they had in their house when they were your age!  They may say they had a cordless phone, or a phone with a long curly cord that hung on the wall, or maybe even a rotary phone (ask them how those work, they were fun!).  They might even say they had a Touch-Tone, or a push-button, phone. And if they grew up in the early 1960s they may have been one of the first in the country to use one!

 

In 1960 the Bell System, the same company started by Alexander Graham Bell, chose Findlay as the first city in the United States to test their new Touch-Tone phones and in November of that year Ohio Bell began to install them in Findlay homes.  After about three years of feedback the Bell System officially introduced their brand new Touch-Tone phones. These phones replaced rotary phones and the touch tone system replaced the pulse dialing technology.  Over the next decade Touch-Tone phones became the worldwide standard. So the next time you’re dialing a phone number take notice of the keypad – that all started right here in Findlay!