@BigBuggyBastage
As a PABX tech myself I can attest that yes, Ringing voltage hurts. Especially with old Dynamo testers.
A relative of mine was a linesman, he had a Dynamo tester in his toolset that I would hold the wires on whilst winding up… Not the smartest thing I’ve done.

The main reason the Phone Company provides voltage on the line (known as Battery Voltage) is they wanted to keep their circuits utterly separate from the power companies, especially back in the old analog “everything gets physically connected” days. Additionally, it’s a negative voltage when on “Single Wire” trunks to limit corrosion.

I can highly recommend checking out the AT&T youtube archives as well as the connections museum YT channel.

I blog about phone-related stuff, but I try to keep my brony identity and my work identity separate.

@Atreidae
No worries man, and thanks for giving her a tag like the other anon said. Hot oc too.

@LemonDrop
Yep, they had about 50 volts DC (plus or minus a lot) provided across the landline to “run” each handset. But to ring the telephone, the phone company applies a 90 VAC signal to the line, which I can tell you from experience really tingles. It’s a robust system that’s especially handy when storms might knock out power, but you still need a means of letting the power company know there’s an outage or other situation, never mind the capability of dialing 911 even when power is out.

I knew this stuff because the following is a close representation of the phone at my parents’ house right now, and I’ve had to repair it:

I remember having a phone exactly like that a while ago as a sort of backup landline phone. Was powered off the phone line so it’d work usually even if the power went out (whereas others would need external power).

cute :)

@Background Pony #F422
I was going with “Phony Pony” but the name in the thread seemed to be Phone Pone…

@Atreidae
Thanks for giving her a tag. Personally, I would have called her “telepone”. :)

Pretty cute. I wonder if she has any older, round-dial relatives.

@JCV
Thanks, and yes they were helpful.
I was in a bad place yesterday and the Autistic comment hit me pretty hard… TBH it shouldn’t have. They were probably pointing out I could have phrased the questions better.

it seems they are calling her “Phone Pone” in the thread. So I’m going to add an OC tag.

@Atreidae
What do you mean? People didn’t tell you to fuck off or something. It’s just the problem that since the artist and requester are both anonymous and may or may not be in the next thread, there’s not much anyone can do to help. Nobody can make either of those two people respond back to you. The one anon even went back in the archive and linked you the entirety of the conversation from the previous thread, which is way more help than you would usually get. Be a little appreciative. And continually check back in the thread, you may get a response back eventually.

@Background Pony #F422
I did actually do that, and was met with the usual 4chan attitude.

I usually hate phones but this one is an exception.

The number you have dialed is no longer in service

The pone is ringing. Answer the pone.

@Atreidae
Artist is some anon at the source. I guess you could go to the newest drawthread and ask for the artist. Or you could go to the source and upload more pics of this pone.

Can I suggest the name “Phony Pony”

I could spend hours talking to this phone.

As a Telephony engineer, I need details of the artist of this one… for… reasons.

There are more pictures of this cute OC in the draw thread at the source.