got a comment on a video saying that I had pulse dialing backwards; that to dial a 9, a rotary phone sends a single pulse, while dialing a 1 sends 9 pulses, because the order of the digits on the dial determines how far it rotates, and the 1 is furthest from the stop.
naturally i respond and politely say "that's not right, only the 0 is mismatched because you can't express 0 in a finite number of pulses. the rest are straightforward, a 1 sends 1 pulse."
but as i'm typing this, he leaves the same comment in response to another comment (common older guy on youtube behavior) but expands on it, says he remembers doing this as a kid, dialing with the hookswitch for a laugh but having to tens-complement every digit, ah the memories, etc. And this is so detailed that I'm going "this can't be made up, who would make that up."
i've seen american rotary phones, i've seen british rotary phones, i've seen german and swedish and i think japanese rotary phones
but i had never seen a new zealand rotary phone, where the 9 is indeed the closest digit to the stop. i have no idea how this happened or when or why, and I also don't know why it ostensibly also happened in Norway, but only Oslo and nowhere else. the story I found online explaining it makes no sense.
however, this is why the emergency number in NZ is not 999 like in the UK, but 111: they explicitly chose to invert it because the entire point of 999 is that it's very hard to dial by accident. in NZ however, you can dial 999 accidentally by simply jiggling the handset on the hook, or wiggling a wire with a short in it. 111, on the other hand, requires three lengthy trips to the end of the dial.
what in the hell
