Comment by badlibrarian
2 days ago
Almost. A modem sometimes had a phone jack as well as a coupler, for those cases when the handset was hardwired into the phone and the phone was hardwired into the wall.
We tapped where we could and we were happy. Bonus points if the rotary phone had a lock on it and you dialed out by pulsing the hangup switch.
Often, one could dial out by pulsing the on hook switch on any phone. Ask me how I know. That was such a fun discovery! I did it frequently from many different phones.