How did you dial a 'phone number in the olden days?

Answer 1

It all depends on how far back you want to go. The first phones were only ever connected to an operator. The operator would answer when you lifted the handset and they (invariably women) would connect you to the person you wanted, by plugging jack plugs into a board.
Automatic dialling was invented by an undertaker, called Almon Brown Strowger, when he discovered that his trade was being passed to a competitor, by the telephone operator.
To dial, you put your finger in the hole, corresponding to the number, pull the dial ring right round to the finger stop, then remove your finger.
The dial would return under spring pressure. In doing so, the switch inside, would intterupt the voltage on the line, in precise pulses. The pulse would cause an automatic switch to move at the exchange, selecting a line at each pulse and stopping at the final pulse, selecting the final line.
As more phones came on line, more numbers were required. Each successive turn of the dial would operate a sequence of switches at the exchange. After each number the pulse would be passed to another switch. The last correct number, would connect you to the person you wanted.

Answer 2

For the first telephones, you didn't "dial" it at all. You turned a crank attached to a generator that sent an electric current down the wires to the central telephone exchange, where it rang a bell to alert the operator that you wanted to talk to someone. The operator would then physically connect the wires between your phone and the phone of the person you wanted to talk to. (In many cases these would not be the only phones on their respective segments of wire; sometimes there would be a distinctive "ring pattern" ... generated by cranking the generator in the same pattern ... to alert all the phones on that line that someone wanted to talk to the subscriber whose ring pattern was "one long, two short" or whatever.)

More recently, the dials were actual dials; you put your finger in one of several holes in a wheel and turned that wheel until your finger hit a metal stop; when the (spring-loaded) wheel turned back to its starting position, it generated a sequence of pulses that identified the dialed digit to the switching equipment at the central office.