Tuesday Treasures

Tom the backroads traveller hosts this weekly meme. 

I came across an article in Mental Floss that made me smile.

Some things that kids these days don't know where these expressions came from.


WHY DO WE "HANG UP" A PHONE?
Phones used to have two parts to them, a base and a receiver. In order to end a call, the receiver had to be placed or "hung" on the base.

WHY DO WE "DIAL" A PHONE?
To call someone on an old phone, you had to stick your finger in a rotating dial at number positions that would turn the dial for various lengths of time when released. You had to do the entire number every time.

Photo taken NYC

WHY DO CASHIERS "RING UP" A PURCHASE?
Cash registers also used to have little bells in them. Cashiers would enter the price of each item on a set of mechanical levers, when they pressed the button to get the total, the total price would pop up in a window and the bell would ring.

Photo taken Jerome AZ

WHY DO WE "ROLL" A WINDOW UP OR DOWN?
Cars used to have hand cranks in the doors that moved the windows up or down when turned. To open or close a window, you had to roll the crank around a few times.

Photo taken Las Vegas NV

WHERE DOES "SOUNDS LIKE A BROKEN RECORD" COME FROM?
Music used to be played on grooved discs, called records. When these discs were scratched or otherwise damaged, it would cause the same sound to be played over and over again. So to sound like a broken record was to repeat the same thing over and over.

Photo taken Nashville TN

WHAT IS "CLOCKWISE"?
Clocks used to be a circular array of numbers, with pointers mounted on a controller in the center that moved around the circle over the course of the day. The direction that the pointers moved, beginning towards the right at the top of the circle, was referred to as clockwise.

WHY DOES A PHONE OR ALARM CLOCK "RING"?
Now phones and alarm clocks can make any kind of sound to catch your attention, but a long time ago, phones and alarm clocks had little bells inside them for this purpose.

Photo taken in Texas