Re: Obsolete Skills
Here's Wikipedia on tap dialling:
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Tapping
It is possible to trick a phone system into thinking that a rotary dial is being used. To do this, one finds the little button, switch, or hook that is pushed down when you hang up the phone. To "dial" the digit 1, tap it once. For the digit 2, tap it twice QUICKLY (ten taps per second for UK phones and in North America). For the digit 3, use three taps, etc. The digit 0 is ten taps. (But see above if you are in Sweden, New Zealand or Oslo.)
In the UK it used to be possible to make calls for free from coin-box phones (payphones) by tapping. This was on phones with A and B button boxes. (These were phased out between 1958 and 1994 as subscriber trunk dialling was introduced.) A person caught tapping could be charged with 'abstracting electricity from the GPO'. (several cases of dishonestly using telephones without paying were prosecuted under this offence). The Post Office introduced a special Bellset for use in the A/B box to prevent tapping for use in areas where the problem was especially bad. These delayed by a second or so the closure of the line loop (and hence the return of dialling tone) when the handset was lifted.
In popular culture, tapping was used in the movie Red Dragon as a way for prisoner Hannibal Lecter to dial out and circumvent a phone with no dialing mechanism.
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