They work very differently, this phone works by breaking the voltage and creating breaks, todays phones (soon to be yesterdays phones) on hardlines use DTMF (Duel tone multi frequency).
On a side, what were the UK thinking when choosing the emergency numbers while these phones were around to be 999.
When I lived in Taiwan, I read the Taipei Times and occasionally, for the sake of balance, The China Post, so that would be four years ago.
Although, when I have a flight or long-distance train journey, I’ll still pick up The Economist. I wouldn’t call it a “newspaper” myself, but they still use that word to describe themselves, so who am I to argue?
I believe it was done that way to be both difficult and easy. You could find the ‘9’ in the dark, but you did have to rotate the dial all the way around, thus making it difficult to dial emergency services by accident (eg., a kid or an animal playing with the phone).
Pulse dialling was supported on the UK network well into the 1990s, IIRC.
Pulse dialling, that was the term I was looking for. To who ever was asking how to convert, there are no doubt PCB’s with converter chips and so on, it’s not something you will do by playing around with the electrics.
I believe the local loop interface is actually the same as it ever was, electrically speaking. So an old phone should power up and detect on-hook/off-hook. It’s just that modern SLICs don’t bother supporting pulse dialling (as far as I know).
There a adjunct devices that go between phones and the outside line that handle pulse dialing. Cost about 10$ they were giving them away for free when they were trying to get people to sign up to caller ID.
LOL. I remember those. I had one in my junk box somewhere and threw it away only quite recently.
It’s been over 25 years since I surfed the internet on dialup. Good riddance too.
My oldest brother gave me his when he bought something else (PC or Mac, I don’t remember). I wrote some poetry on it, and some other stuff.
I used to buy the Taipei Times (and occasionally the China Post) at the 7-Eleven, and buy a can of Wincafe, and sit outside and read the paper. I seem to have sort of enjoyed the weird, semi-clumsy arm and hand motions I used to go through while seeking and scanning and turning pages and folding and whatnot between sips of canned coffee. Now I don’t read the hard-copy versions of those two papers, and I hardly ever read them online, which I guess is kind of sad.
How long has it been since you took a leak on a bus (in the bus toilet)?
Do they even have them anymore?
Never did that, ever.
This is more a foreign thing than a nostalgia thing:
How long since you last paid for using a public toilet?
(Several years for me. Thanks, Taiwan!)
Tell us about it. How did you pay? Was there a man standing there with white gloves?
When I first came here I had another issue I would not use any toilets because they were all squat style.
In cases of emergency I would visit the five-star hotels and use their lobbyist rooms.
The one next to the old caves bookstore was a favorite emergency stop.
But relatively recently, the bathrooms have improved and they all have toilet paper. Even ones in public parks.
How long has it been since you were in a public bus station bathroom for the cleaning ladies would walk right in and do full Johnson inspections while mopping the floors?
When was the last time you used an exposed urinal outside a bathroom shack somewhere with no privacy Shields?
Well, in Taiwan, never. Back in Europe, department store toilets with grumpy old ladies from Eastern Europe come to mind.
Thanks for the clarification 
I would say about 15 years ago. The long-distance buses (the ones with big squishy seats and actual toilets) pretty much disappeared overnight once the HSR was operational.
before city Cafe, there was a third English language newspaper, too. But this might have been before Taipei times…maybe always just 2.
Full-on shit-ur-pants diarrhea kept me over an hour in a bus toilet from Hua Hin to Bkk more than a decade ago. The worst most foul place to go…but no choice, I’d been holding for so long, it was only a matter of time.
Apparently, I touched everyone on the bus with the stench. You know those dumps, half liquid but with the solid consistency of chocolate mousse. Wiping just means smearing over your ass, nothing gets cleaned.
It was all white deadded, tatted backpackers on the bus, so…who cares. probably the most memorable dump in my life. Total desperation.
How long since I had epic diarrhea on public transportation? Chinese train circa 2003, that was a squatting option only train (those iron roosters are probably all retired now), and I hadn’t been in country long enough to do so comfortably at the best of times. I still remember the fear of losing my balance on the hard turns while my stomach cramped. Good times.
Lots of beer and cards on those trains, smoking between the cars, like little cities they were…
Very poetic 
Last time I had epic diarrhea on ‘public transport’ just happened to be when I’d got a free business class upgrade and spent half of the flight in the sodding business class toilets. Didn’t touch a drop of the free booze or the food. Grr. At least I got some sleep.