I have noticed phones with a handset (like the one in the image) have a little cover that resembles something like a cold camera shoe under the bottom of the handset’s top speaker holder. Is there a use for it? It has a line bump in the middle, but it doesn’t go all the way from both sides, it leaves a gap. I have also seem some of them have extra space on the top of the cover, and some don’t.
What in the world is a cold camera shoe?
It’s a slot on a camera that you can use to attach accessories, like a microphone or flash. A hot shoe provides power to the accessory, a cold shoe does not.
Well, see what a hot camera shoe is?
Just Leave it outside for a while, and there you are.
Why would you attach an image that does not show what you are referring to?
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.
Btw, on Trimline phones it is reversible for if you’re not hanging it on a wall. It looks like this when you pull it out.
Does that white semicircle on the bottom of your nails represent blood or platelet deficiency?
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.
Yes! Another phone nerd!
One small clarification. There’s not really anything special to the pulses for pulse dialing. One pulse for the number 1, all the way to nine pulses for number 9, and then ten pulses for a number 0.
So that’s how you used the old hand crank phones, I never know. I thought you turned the crank to get power into the phone and then told the person working the switch bord who you want is to talk to. And that when you were telling you sometimes needed to re turn the crank to get more power.
And the even older design that didn’t even have a bell integrated in the base. The bell was in a separate bell box.
Well, cannot be wall-mounted like the one in your picture but those phones did get wall-mounted in slightly different shape.
What the heck is a camera shoe?
The “hot shoe” is the mount for a flash or other accessories on a camera https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Canon_350D_Hot_Shoe.jpg
The “shoe” is the mount. “Hot” means powered, for things like flashes. “Cold” means unpowered, for things like tripods.
could had posted a picture of a horse it would be just as helpful but a lot funnier
