In Germany, most offices used these in the 50’s till the early 90’s:
And these for long distance connections:
If you’re interested what sound all those made on your receiver, listen to Evan Doorbell’s recordings. For the German Siemens switches, check out his Florida tapes. That’s the sound how I remember long distance calling in Germany. The part after dialing that is.
I don’t know, sort of - it wasn’t that fast, more like slow chopping (I don’t chop my carrots that fast), but maybe we were just hearing a muffled version of it.
Back to phones, I was always a bit disappointed we never have one of those ones mounted on the wall, like you see in films. Was that mostly an American thing or did anyone else have one?
Oh you geniunely have no idea? Okay, I wasn´t sure actually. I thought at first that the change from photo to video implied that you remembered that you in fact do have a photo of a phone cord wired around toes (possibly your own, for whatever reason).
I suppose it also depends where the phone is. Those wall-mounted ones were (are?) usually in the kitchen. Our ‘desktop’ one was on a little shelf/cubby hole type thing in the hallway (we called it the ‘telephone table’). I used to climb into it when on the phone to my friends Hm, I wonder if I still fit…