eli5 how you could pick up a telephone and hear another conversation(not in the same house)

Question

when i was a kid you could pick up the landline and hit the call button and join whatever conversation was already happening. though i’m reading salems lot right now, and they mention picking up the phone and hearing a conversation from those i know are not in the same home. how did this work???

In: 0

Answer 1

When I was a kid, we were on a party line. My family and two other families shared the same phone line. So sometimes you could pick up the phone and the neighbors would be talking with someone and you had to wait until they were done before you could get a dial tone. There were three different rings for the three different households.