[jmkb]

I grew up with rotary phones, and dialing (on a physical dial) really was fun.

Disassembling my first junk phone and playing with the rotary relay was even more fun.

But the best was learning to dial numbers by manually pulsing the switch on the handset cradle. Timing was tricky but luckily there was some leeway. (And it helped that phone numbers were shorter then.)

[mhandley]

Dialing by tapping the cradle switch to produce your own pulses was very useful once upon a time - it allowed you to bypass the dial lock that some places fitted to allow incoming calls only. Some people who shall remain anonymous got quite good at it.