Thatās all right. You should see me trying to ride a skateboard (do they still call them skateboards?). 
You should see me trying to use a vernier caliper.
My youngest (10) saw this video early last week. He asked what they were doing & why they didnāt pick it up and dial. He knew how to dial one.
Yes but I believe adults call them lawsuits, ER visits & bone breakers.
Also, these kids can probably text faster than I can talk.
Okay, I am showing my age. I grew up on a farm in northern Ohio in the early 1960ās. In one day we converted from a hand cranked wall phone to a rotary phone. Wow!!! Our old phone number was 313, which stood for area 3, 1 long ring and 3 short rings. Our new phone number was 7 digits plus an area code. Then it was 15 years later that we got touch tone service.
Here is how the hand cranked phone worked. You were connected on a party line, meaning that all your neighbors shared the same phone line. When the phone bell rang you had to count the number of rings to determine if the call was meant for you or your neighbors. Many of the times you would pick up the phone and hear your neighbors were already using the phone line. You could butt in on their conversation asking them if they could hang up and give you access to the shared phone line to you. Sometimes while you were using the phone the Operator would butt in and ask you to hang up so that your other neighbor could receive a long distance phone call. Of course, if you were just plain nosy you could listen in on every conversation in the neighborhood. You would hear a click, click sound on the phone and just knew that someone was listening in on your phone call. Mildred, get off the phone! . . you would then hear that click, click sound again.
Oh, speaking about the telephone Operator . . . to reach the Operator you would turn the hand crank and make one long ring, the Operator would pick up. Now that also meant that every one of your neighborās telephones would also ring. Since there was no dial you had to tell the Operator the phone number of who you wanted to talk to. It was common practice to ring the Operator whenever you left your house, tell the Operator that you were going over to Mary Sueās house. Then when you got back you would call the Operator again to let them know you had returned. The Operator was always in the know about everything going on in the neighborhood; she knew who was where, what was going on, maintained messages about each neighborās health, and knew everybody by voice.
Even with the old hand cranked walk phones we had some of the same features we enjoy today; Emergency 911, automatic call forwarding, automatic dialing, messaging service, etcā¦ If you had an emergency you would make one real long ring and everybody in the neighborhood plus the Operator would get on the line - Emergency 911. Because the Operator already knew you were at Mary Sueās house, the Operator would automatically forward your call to that phone - Automatic Call Forwarding. To make a phone call outside your area, you would tell the Operator what the number was and she would continually dial it for you and call you back when the connection was made - Automatic Dialing. If you were gone outside the area, the Operator would take any messages for you - Messaging Service.
That is a cool story.
Thanks for sharing.
First of all, why donāt they just ask Siri to dial the number for them. Second of all, at least itās not as rough as Oliver having to climb up the pole to use the phone in Green Acres.
Iāve got an Adafruit cell phone module with voice capability. Long on my list had been to convert a Bakelite rotary phone into a portable cell phone. I know itās been done before - just seems too cool.
Analytical Skills?
We donāt need no stinkinā Analytical Skills. 
Causes one to wonder what kind of STEM/STEAM classes they had.
Almost as funny as old folk trying to deal/figure out modern tech. Those VR videos are a real hoot.
You should see my friend complain when he hits the wrong button on his remote controls which he does constantly. Itās a good day when he doesnāt throw the thing at the screen.
I worked for Ma Bell back in the day and it occurred to me that people live with this device but had no idea how it works. The fact that the dial sends a pulse stream by interrupting the line voltage via a mechanical interrupter is not the way people thought of their beloved Princess phone. Relays in the central office then switched according to those pulses and formed a connection through a complex maze. So what is my point? Suppose you had been plucked from 1970, when man had just made it to the moon (feeling pretty smartā¦ right?) and plopped down in 2019ā¦ and given a key fob to start a car. How many would hop in the car and look for the keyhole that would fit the fob? (Iād have to raise my hand!) (okā¦ I DID laugh at the videoā¦)
Here is an older video on what went behind at the phone company before it all turned digital.
Thatās really neat
It is not well known that the switchhook (uh, whatās a switchhook?) works as a mechanical interrupter. Back in the day, I was pretty good at dialing by tapping the switchhook. I could make a call from a rotary phone in the dark without a flashlight. Really old pay phones could be dialed that way without having to insert coin.
I usually was lazy and would just click it 10 times to dial zero and ask the operator to connect me to the number I wanted.
Step by Step EM switches had probably been phased out before most of us were born. Crossbar EM switches served into the 90s in some local exchanges before digital took over. Digital switches are dinosaurs now - VoIP is taking over beyond the local loop with old-school TDM switches being retired; a handful of servers connected to routers across the globe can perform what used to take enormous switches on every CO. Often as not the copper loop ends at a cabinet in the field with transport to the CO and beyond as some flavor of packetized data over fiber.