Until early 90's in Brazil we had a red Ericsson phone just like the one in the attachment. In my child's mind it was pretty cool as it was similar to the hotline between US and USSR.
Even today when I call my parent's (Brazil) or my brother's (Argentina) home I hear the busy signal - it may be the VoIP system or the local operator.
Call progress tones are generated at various places for SS7 or VOIP systems. If the digital status indication doesn't make it all the way back to the user's cell phone, it will just stay on the line and you will hear the progress tone. If the phone does receive status codes, it responds by hanging up and displaying the indication instead of letting the tone through.
I hated these rotary phones. They were a PITA if you were in a hurry and wanted to dial something quickly.
I agree but I do prefer the sound of ringing bells, rather than the electronic chirp.
I'm not even that old. My parents had an old rotary phone until the late 90s.
I really like the bell sound. I bought a GPO model 746 a couple of years ago and that has a nice bell. It is normally configured to be extremely loud; if you called it, you'd wake the whole street up, but I altered it to make it much quieter. I put a big resistor in series with the bell so the hammer doesn't move as far, and I rotated the gongs inwards so they are closer together. Now it makes a much more pleasant quiet (ish) ringing sound.
I find the rotary mechanism quite fun to use, but I do like push button phones as well.
My mom had a rotary dial phone (well, it had big pushbuttons, but it was set to pulse dial mode) until less than 8 years ago when she required some medical equipment with a life alert attachment that only did touch tone. She never wanted to pay the extra $1 per month they charged for touch tone! It was extremely frustrating back when I was in school and still at home, since I always had to set my modem to pulse dial instead of tone, so it took me 10x longer to dial in to a BBS than everyone else.
It's not just time - IP addresses (IPv4 anyway) sort poorly when sorted alphabetically. Things like 192.168.100.100 sort before 192.168.100.2
There are some civilian things in the US where the time needs to be clear with no ambiguities so 24hr time is used - such as in travel. Somehow though I think if you ask the average American what time of day it is if the time is 1930 they will just look at you with a blank face or say "it can't be over 12"
The busy signal still exists, it's just not very common. If you're calling an overloaded PBX or internationally. It is amazing how much of an impact Internet and cellphones have had on our lives.
I can't imagine leaving my house without my phone.