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> There's a timeout for the reverse direction, but it at least used to be fairly long. This brings up one of those cultural things: ever noticed how in movies and TV shows from the 80s and 90s, if the caller hung up, the person called immediately got a dial tone? It's a trope that prop wranglers, set designers, and writers picked up because the telephone company around Los Angeles (Pacific Bell) had switches that would reset the line state for the destionation back to "ready for call", which meant dial tone, when the origin side disconnected. If the destination side disconnected, the origin would only be disconnected after approximately 20 seconds. Almost all other exchanges would put the destination--after the origin disconnects--into an off-hook-but-not-ready and then, after 10 or so seconds, play the "if you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again" recording, then Special Information Tones, then a rapid busy. Yet because the service in and around LA is what a lot of people in the TV and movie business experienced, it is what got baked into those productions. |
I was a rather violent sleeper when I was young and would occasionally knock the phone off the hook while sleeping. Then I woke up to the fairly loud rapid busy sound. Hadn't thought about that a while.