What were telephones like in 1965?

Answer 1

Most phones in 1965 were rotary dial. A few were touchtone, but only had 0 through 9 keys (* and # were not added until 1969). A few remote exchanges still used wooden battery-operated cranked wall phones and manual switchboards with operators, but in general all calls both local and long distance could be dialed directly without operator assistance. The phone company owned all phones and you leased the one you used; nothing that was not phone company property could be connected to any phone line. Party lines of 2 to 10 parties sharing the same line were almost universal, even within towns and cities. Most party lines included a "ringer box" on the wall in the room where your phone was that would decode the ring code so that your phone rang only when you were called, but some party line installations still used the older system of "distinctive rings", where half the phones on the line (all the "tip" phones or all the "ring" phones) would ring for a call to any of those phones and you had to recognize your ring (e.g. short-long-pause, long-short-pause, short-short-short-pause, extended-pause) pattern.

Local calls were "free" and included in your basic service. Toll calls were charged a low rate per minute that depended on the toll exchange(s) that the call had to be connected through, and long distance calls were charged a high rate per minute that also increased with distance. Your phone bill arrived on a set of IBM punchcards, clearly marked "do not fold, bend, spindle, or mutilate" because you had to return the payment card with your check to get it correctly processed.