That’s what our phone looked like up to the late '90s or perhaps even early 2000s, but it was already ancient when I was little.
We didn´t have a rotary (many relatives had, though like grand parents) but except that we also didn´t get something like this
before the late 90s early 00s.
Until then we had something like this for the longest time
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Ha! We had to use this thing:
I think we had this one:
It says it was given out from '65 through '87 so I guess it might’ve conceivably been only a couple years older than me. O-o
I’m pretty sure it was from the '70s if not earlier though. It didn’t just have an ancient design but it was also yellowing and stuff.
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Yeah, I think that was one of the two standardised telephones from the post office.
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AFAIK it was the only model. You could get it in three colours: gray, green and orange.
Actually I meant one model in two colours, yes. I wasn´t aware of the orange one.
Two buttons? One may be because of a Gemeinschaftsanschluss, what are those for? (LET’S PAARTEEEEYYY!)
You haven´t lived through the 90s if you never picked up a phone and heard a modem screech on the other end.
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/edit: And here is how it worked:
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The sheet for the dial tones can’t be accurate, since they are designed not to represent music or any natural occurrence.
Actually, I still hear such modem sounds occasionally, as there are still many fax machines around, and some of them have a speaker for such nonsense. Seems strange that they didn’t switch to something like SIP by now.
I recall that my grandparents had a wall-mounted model (with dial), but am unable to find a picture. I’m less sure about our own. I remember a red one with buttons, but we might have had one with a dial before. As we lived in the same house as the grandparents, the phones were installed simultaneously. I still remember that holes had to be drilled through floors and walls for the required wiring. Can’t recall the year, but must have been early to mid 80s.
In our village, we’ve been rather late with the phones, so we ended up having a 4-digit number, while a good friend of mine had 3 digits (997). Though theirs was later changed to 4 digits also (5997). I’m not sure, but I guess all numbers handed out these days have a standard length of 7?
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Yeah I think the fourth digit was added sometime in the late 80s early 90s? There was a big marketing campaign with it, too.
All landline numbers I have saved have 7 digits now.
Telephone numbers have an interesting history for sure, but it would be very useful to mention the country you’re talking about.
There are quite some differences when it comes to this. In Germany, we had variable lengths for a long time, not only for the user’s number, but also for the area code. Also existing numbers rarely changed. Some villages still have user numbers with 3 digits.
We were both talking about germany, actually.
There are even brand new rotary phones like this one:
https://www.opis-tech.com/en/shop/landline-phones/60s-cable/opis-60s-cable-green
The case and the receiver are very sturdy, but the dial unfortunately is far from the 60’s quality they used to be.
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I guess I haven’t then. Unless a fax counts. 
How did we end up talking about phones in this topic?
We had a rotary when I was very little. You had to allow about 20 minutes to dial.
We never had a wireless phone, and my mum still doesn’t. We also only got our first one a few years ago – but maybe that’s because landlines aren’t as necessary these days.
In my house it was usually someone else picking it up while I was producing the modem screech 
Fun fact: for a long time, whenever I called my friend (or she called me) we heard the distinct sound of someone chopping carrots on the line. Never worked out what that was.
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They spoofed it in a Drawn Together episode. It was some tense situation and they were in a hurry to call someone, then they hold the vintage phone, the music stops and everything with it, and all you hear is the sound of rotary dialing like forever. It was even longer in the DVD version.
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