What Does It Mean to Dial 9 for an Outside Line?
Dial 9 for an Outside Line serves as your look into what it was like to grow up, go to school, work, live, party, communicate, and handle other Important Stuffs from the 1950s to about 2004, AKA the dawn of FB (we shall not speak of that entity again).
Before I fill you in on my pre-internet creds, let’s deal with the question at hand: what did it mean to dial 9 for an outside line?
I entered the workforce in the early 1970s, performing a number of boring slacker-type jobs so I could pay exorbitant Boston rent (before that, less exorbitant Richmond, VA, rent). Occasionally I had to handle office phones. Phones that looked roughly like this (free image, Pixabay).
In most offices, if you wanted to call someone outside the company—your lover, your mom, your doctor’s office—you had to dial 9 first to connect to Bell Telephone lines. These lines theoretically enabled you to reach anyone you wanted, as long as you had their number. But at work, it had better not be a long distance call, which cost serious bucks and thus could get you in trouble.
(Generally, “long distance” involved another area code than your own, but not always. We won’t deal with the intricacies of long distance B[a]C—before [area] codes. We might touch on trunk lines—I think that’s what they were called!—that enabled large companies to call their overseas biz buddies more cheaply. But I’m hardly a telco expert, so my terminology could be wrong.)
So. You are working for some WM [white male] corporate stiff, maybe typing a memo. (IBM Selectric typewriters, ah, there’s a memory.) You realize you forgot to wish your mom a happy birthday, and luckily, the call is local. So you pick up the handset, dial 9 to secure an outside line—the dial tone is different, which is how you know you have one. (If you don’t know what a dial tone is, here’s more than you ever wanted to know about analog telco sounds, most likely.) You call Mom, wish her HBD, and then hang up, because your boss gets pissy over all personal calls.
“Hanging up” means placing the handset back in its cradle, thus disconnecting the call and enabling the phone to receive another call. (Here are details about rotary phones, if you don’t know what I’m talking about. And there’s also this, from 1954, when the phone company—there was only one, Bell Telephone—was converting from operators to dialing a number yourself.)
That’s what it meant to dial 9 for an outside line.
As promised, me
I'm in my early 70s and can tell you most of what you want to know about What It Was Really Like before the internet--actually, before most tech as we know it today. I remember my first cell phone with Verizon, a largeish mother that filled my hand, and then some. $40 a month got me 30 minutes airtime (1997). I remember my first internet account--AOHell [AOL, America Online] for a few weeks, then a local ISP (internet service provider). Also, Mosaic, IRC, and a few other OG internet pieces of software (1995) that opened up my world.
In the early to mid 70s, I worked with mainframes that were bigger than my studio apartment's main room. Keypunch operators were essential to the process of paying employees, as payroll was “run” on the mainframes. My first computer (actually, my software/firmware engineer roommate's computer) was a Sony microcomputer running CP/M. I learned BASIC, and basic Pascal, on that thing.
I worked in Boston area tech from 1986 to 2001 as a software/hardware technical writer and online help designer/programmer. I also enjoyed a stint in broadcast radio (analog) as a DJ (1978-1985) in the Boston market.
Those were the days, my friends. But enough of that for now.
PS—Barrie Abalard is a pseudonym I often use on social media. It seemed easier to use BA rather than my real name, which is not well known on Bluesky, Post, and Twitter, which I probably won’t be on much longer. I use my real name on FB.