[HN Gopher] Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The ...
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Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
Author : matthiasl
Score : 221 points
Date : 2024-12-22 11:49 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (corelatus.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (corelatus.com)
| peutetre wrote:
| > _The number itself was probably made-up: it 's too short and
| the area code doesn't seem valid._
|
| 44 is the country code for the UK.
| matthiasl wrote:
| Author here.
|
| Yep, 44 is the UK country code. The problem I got stuck on is
| that the rest of the number, 1831, didn't make sense. I assumed
| the number was complete, since it had the right start and stop
| signalling (KP1/KF).
|
| It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and,
| today, I think London numbers start with 020. The UK numbering
| plan has changed several times since 1980, but I couldn't find
| a time between 1980 and now where part of 1831 was a London
| number.
|
| Later on (in the addendum), it turns out that others took a
| look at the signal in the time domain and spotted a splice,
| i.e. digits are chopped out of the middle of the number, so the
| area code probably isn't there at all. It could be that the
| area code starts with 1, and then the phone number ends with
| 831.
| robthebrew wrote:
| I remember London area codes being 01 (or 0441 from USA)
| followed by 6 digits, so maybe 3 are missing. It would be
| interesting to see if that landline is still available, but
| with 1000 possibilities (01ABC831) maybe a google search
| might be the way to go.
| matthiasl wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Normally, films use deliberately fictious numbers, e.g. in
| the US it's always xxx555xxxxxx. Wikipedia says the UK uses
| various area codes for the same thing, including 011x and
| 01x1. The Pink Floyd number is a bit unusual---it's not
| made up.
|
| According to a previous analysis, the call was the album's
| "Chief Engineer James Guthrie who called his own London
| apartment", with a neighbour answering the phone. Someone
| probably knows roughly where James Guthrie lived in
| 1979/1980 and what the area code there was. But I don't.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| Okay. If the call was from within the UK then I think the
| 0441 code would have been Swansea, but that would have
| required 3 numbers being cut from the middle.
| Polizeiposaune wrote:
| Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_(telephone_number)#
| Fiction..., the officially reserved block under the NANP
| has shrunk to XXX-555-01XX, but outside of XXX-555-1212
| (directory assistance), and toll-free 800-555-XXXX there
| is little use of the range.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There are some hits in this old phonebook [1], but one
| needs to pay to view the records. Maybe some one else can
| do this.
|
| [1] https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1025/?n
| ame=Jam...
| stordoff wrote:
| > Wikipedia says the UK uses various area codes for the
| same thing, including 011x and 01x1.
|
| Ofcom has set aside blocks of numbers within many
| different area codes for dramatic use[1]. The note on
| Wikipedia about 011x and 01x1 is that the reserved
| numbers in those (real) area codes usually end with 496
| 0xxx (so, for instance, 0114 496 0000 to 0114 496 0999
| are reserved numbers in the Sheffield/0114 area - other
| 0114 numbers may be allocated to real customers).
|
| [1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/phone-
| numbers/...
| kmoser wrote:
| Somebody could contact James Guthrie since he's still
| alive and probably has his old apartment phone number
| written down somewhere (if not still memorized).
| wdfx wrote:
| This is correct.
|
| In the 90's I recall London area prefix changed from 01 to
| first 071 (central) and 081 (greater) and then 0171 and
| 0181. Later still, those codes became 0207 and 0208.
|
| I still notice old shop signs up with the old prefixes.
| graemep wrote:
| > I couldn't find a time between 1980 and now where part of
| 1831 was a London number.
|
| What about when outer London numbers started 081? Dialed from
| another country with the 00 international call prefix the
| number if could be a fragment starting from the second digit
| (i.e. 0044 1831xxxx)?
|
| the change form 01 was a big deal, and BT ran some very
| amusing ads playing on snobbishness about where in London one
| lived.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Hiya, I see that you updated your blog in regards to this
| previous HN discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28858285
|
| It references a Telephone World article called ''Pink Floyd's
| Young Lust - explained and demystified'' with great analysis
| of the sequences heard.
| matthiasl wrote:
| The discussion is new to me.
|
| I started analysing the audio because someone sent me a
| link to the film (The Wall) on youtube and asked me about
| the signalling. Once I'd decoded the telephone number, I
| tried googling it, to see if someone else had already
| figured out what it was (a US local number? the number to a
| US operator? the number a US operator called to talk to a
| UK operator? the number a UK operator dialled to get a
| London number?), but nothing came up. There's quite a bit
| of good discussion about that in the comments here.
|
| A week or two later, I tried googling 'Pink Floyd Telephone
| Call', and found that the audio actually comes from the
| album, i.e. it's not just in the film, and a bit more
| information about how it was made, and put that in the
| addendum.
| taylorius wrote:
| All UK internal phone numbers start with a zero. However when
| you dial the UK from abroad, you omit the leading zero, so
| the UK version of the number in question would be 01831,
| which sounds a lot like an area code (though apparently is
| not one in current use)
| fredoralive wrote:
| A London number at the time would be from the UK (01) eee
| nnnn where e is the exchange[1] and n is just a number, and
| the 01 can be omitted if you're in the 01 area. For
| intentional calls it would be (+44) 1 eee nnnn, as you omit
| the initial 0 that on an internal UK call is an indication
| you're dialling an STD[2] number and not a local number.
| There doesn't seem to have been an 831 exchange at the
| time[3], so as noted in the article the cut to shorten the
| number is presumably somewhere in the middle.
|
| In 1990 London was split into 071 (central) and 081 (areas),
| which meant in 1995 all landlines could have an 01 prefix, so
| London because 0171 and 0181 (and that ruined the Live and
| Kicking phone number jingle, although I think the Going Live
| one was better anyway) and finally in 2000 London became 020,
| with the 7/8 moving to the first digit of the local number
| (not that the split between local and area codes really
| matters anymore).
|
| [1] Of course, in ye olden days before all this newfangled
| "dialling" you'd ask the operator for something like
| "WHItehall 1212", not 944 1212 (or later 930 1212).
|
| [2] Subscriber Trunk Dialling.
|
| [3] https://rhaworth.net/phreak/tenp_01.php has a list,
| although it seems to be based on a 1968 publication.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > you'd ask the operator for something like "WHItehall
| 1212"
|
| I still remember my mom making me memorize our phone number
| when I was very young, "SPring 9 0273". It wasn't very long
| afterward that everybody switched to all number dialing
| though.
| hinkley wrote:
| Show me... subscriber trunk dialing. I must know
| everything.
| Tempat wrote:
| See the note at the end of the article. It's a real number but
| with some of the digits in the middle edited out of the
| recording.
| plapsley wrote:
| Yes! This is what I concluded when, a few years back, I did a
| similar analysis to what matthiasl posted. <shameless plug>
| If you're interested in this kind of thing, please check out
| my book, Exploding the Phone. https://explodingthephone.com
| </shameless plug>
| codevark wrote:
| Odd. This and other PF audio figured in a dream last night. Then
| I came downstairs and saw this.
| prepend wrote:
| Obviously we are all still in your dream. Please hold on asleep
| as long as you can as I treasure my existence and don't want it
| to end.
| tzot wrote:
| In a parallel universe, this thread is about the Beatles, where
| you woke up from the dream, found your way downstairs, had a
| coffee and somebody replied to your post.
| cassiepaper wrote:
| From: James Guthrie interview
|
| > Another piece that worked better than expected was the
| telephone operator. Roger was keen to illustrate the personal
| disconnect of being on the road. We were in L.A. at Producer's
| Workshop so I phoned my neighbour, Chris Fitzmorris in London. He
| had the keys to my flat and I asked him to go there and said that
| I would call him through an operator. "No matter how many times I
| call", I said, "just pick up the phone, say 'Hello', let the
| operator speak and then hang up". I placed a telephone in a
| soundproof area, got on to an extension phone and started
| recording to 1/4" tape. It took a couple of operators - the first
| 2 were a bit abrupt, but the 3rd was perfect. I told her that I
| wanted to make a collect call to Mrs. Floyd. "Who's calling?" she
| asked. "Mr. Floyd", I replied. Chris's timing was terrific, over
| and over he would hang up just at the right moment and she became
| genuinely concerned. "Is there supposed to be someone there
| besides your wife?" I was playing her along saying things like
| "No! I don't know who that is!" "What's going on?" and she would
| try the call again. Unwittingly, she was helping to tell the
| story. Afterwards I went through the 1/4" and edited my voice
| out, just leaving her and Chris. I sometimes wonder if she ever
| heard herself on the record.
|
| Source: https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/other-related-
| interviews/jame...
| mrandish wrote:
| It's cool to hear how that came together as an improvisation.
| It recalls a simpler time when a major album (or movie, TV
| show, etc) could just feature your neighbor and a random
| telephone operator without signing releases and clearing
| rights.
|
| It also gave Chris Fitzmorris (the neighbor) one of the
| greatest "random cool thing that happened to me" stories ever.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Musicians still release samples without clearing them
| mrandish wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware. Although a _major_ mega band doing so on a
| wide release album these days would be taking a significant
| legal risk - which is why it 's now fairly rare. But back
| in 1979 it wasn't uncommon, to the extent that one of the
| then-biggest bands in the world could do so on their
| biggest album project yet.
| slillibri wrote:
| Alternatively, treating the "random telephone operator" as a
| prop and forcing them to be part of your project without
| consent is troubling.
| aaaooj wrote:
| I do not believe that you are genuinely troubled by this.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Okay, Data.
| prepend wrote:
| It's their job. I "forced" them to be part of my project of
| making collect calls hundreds of times.
| raywu wrote:
| > Initially, I was shocked at how slowly everything moved! I
| was used to working really quickly when producing and
| engineering albums. Suddenly it was like the brakes were on and
| often it was difficult to get the momentum going. Eventually, I
| adapted to the Floyd pace. One of the great things about
| working with this band is that you are allowed time to be
| creative, to pursue an idea even if it takes some time. The
| Floyd had a production deal to make their records and the
| record label never heard anything until it was done. The record
| was made purely and only by the people in the studio.
|
| The creative freedom without commercial intervention - this is
| very cool. I can almost hear it in The Wall - how grand and
| elongated the songs are.
|
| What a great interview. Thank you for linking
| hinkley wrote:
| "The Floyd"?
|
| Ironic that Have a Cigar was released four years before The
| Wall: The band is just fantastic, that is
| really what I think Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?
| kagakuninja wrote:
| The band originally was The Pink Floyd (after changing
| their name from The Tea Set)
| hinkley wrote:
| But never The Floyd. Just as the band isn't named after a
| man called Pink.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| s/never/commonly\, in the parlance of the time\,/
| WolfCop wrote:
| It was named after a man called Pink.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Anderson
| hinkley wrote:
| Okay. Not named after a band member named Pink.
|
| Unlike Pink, which is the stage name of the artist.
| tremon wrote:
| Curveball, the band is named after a man called Pink!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Anderson and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Council
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Sorry, I don't see the irony. Anyway, having ''The'' as an
| honourific for band names was commonplace in the UK prior
| to the '70s, even if the band's name had not been stylized
| with "The".
| hinkley wrote:
| It takes exactly the same amount of time to say as "Pink"
| Quekid5 wrote:
| ?
| hinkley wrote:
| It's an interview. Pink Floyd, The Floyd. Why would you
| say The Floyd?
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Again, for people of a certain age or generation it was
| commonplace to prepend it. I find it endearing in a
| nostalgic way. I can infer from that person's use of it
| that he is of that age or generation.
| leptons wrote:
| Ever see someone mention "The Donald"? It's the same
| thing.
|
| It's when something or someone gets so recognizable that
| they can be referred to in a singular sense. There are
| lots of instances of this throughout pop culture.
|
| In the context of the interview, it's someone who was
| part of the "Floyd-verse" (this word is a mashup of Floyd
| and Universe, another common affectation). Pink Floyd was
| a remarkably famous band, and they still are. Someone
| that was part of the "Floyd-verse" naturally would have
| felt the band as all encompassing. It wasn't just a band,
| it was tour after tour, hit song after hit song, millions
| and millions of fans - and getting caught up in that made
| "Pink Floyd" seem far bigger than the sum of its parts.
| Calling that phenomenon "The Floyd" is actually very
| succinct, and portrays how large a cultural phenomenon
| Pink Floyd was.
|
| I have to wonder why you can't/won't understand this, or
| if you make it your business to start pointless internet
| arguments.
| prepend wrote:
| It's a term of familiarity. I don't think it's about
| efficiency of speech. Nicknames aren't always about
| shortening names.
| DevKoala wrote:
| "The Floyd" is the name a lot of people who worked with
| the band use, it shows up on many texts and other
| documentaries.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I'm going to listen to The Stones, then some Skynyrd,
| maybe put on some Zeppelin or the Dead.
| hinkley wrote:
| But not The Zeppelin or The Skynyrd.
| ddingus wrote:
| Same, except I do love "Sweet Home Alabama" so it will
| slip through.
|
| I am currently burned out on Zep.
| jameslk wrote:
| I was wondering if they ever figured out who the operator was?
| I couldn't find anything about her through my Googling. Seems
| like she should have some credit in the album for her brilliant
| contribution
| shric wrote:
| The session singer who did "The Great Gig in the Sky" vocals
| on The Dark Side of the Moon famously got PS30. She later
| sued and got an undisclosed settlement.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Torry
| SoftTalker wrote:
| "He keeps hanging up. And it's a _man_ answering. "
|
| You can tell the operator was really loving that....
| parpfish wrote:
| A while back I tracked down the video clip from the show Gomer
| Pyle that was used for the "But there's somebody else that needs
| taking care of in Washington" background audio.
|
| Seeing that in its original context was jarring
| s0sa wrote:
| I know what you mean. I recently did the same thing for the
| little bit from Gunsmoke at the beginning of "Is There Anybody
| Out There?", e.g. "Is it unsafe to travel at night?" -
| incidentally spoken by actress Diana Muldaur, who later played
| Dr. Pulaski in Star Trek TNG.
| chiph wrote:
| Now I wonder if Frankie Goes to Hollywood sampled the voice
| on "Two Tribes" from some 1950's British government film.
|
| "If your grandmother or any other member of the family Should
| die whilst in the shelter Put them outside, but remember to
| tag them first For identification purposes"
| noizejoy wrote:
| Almost. Not sampled from the original, but recreated by the
| same voice actor:
|
| > Actor Patrick Allen, who narrated the associated public
| information films, recreated this narration ... [0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive#Cultu
| ral_i...
| hinkley wrote:
| "Stewardess, I speak Jive." Will to me always be the weirdest
| later screen appearance. June Cleaver arguing in jive is hard
| to beat.
| defaultcompany wrote:
| On the cassette tape version of The Wall I had if you flipped the
| cassette over during this phone call sequence it would end up
| being right in the middle of another song (can't remember which
| one) which has this recording playing as part of the background.
| I feel like it couldn't have been intentional but who knows.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm betting subconscious but intentional. I've heard a couple
| artists talk about how they organize an album and there's a
| vibe they're going for but I didn't get the impression any of
| them had it down to anything like a science.
|
| Dark Side of the Moon and the Wizard of Oz. It's just two
| artists putting a story arc together by feel and getting the
| same shape. A bit birthday paradox, but a bit shared vibe.
|
| In the case of The Wall, I would bet a certain degree of
| symmetry was being reached for. Few artists want to leave or
| start an album on a sour note, but there will be songs in the
| middle that are.
|
| One of the things I miss from the pre-streaming era is that
| "nobody" listens to whole albums at a time anymore, and I find
| that a shame. I used to start humming the next song on the
| album when I would hear things on the radio. Makes it worse
| when they trim the intro or outro for radio play though. I
| prefer the album version of Wish You Were Here, for instance.
| dotancohen wrote:
| My then-15 year old daughter surprised me a few years ago. We
| had just pulled up to the house. Instead of opening the car
| door, she put on Led Zeppelin I and we sat in the car
| listening to the entire album together. I honestly think that
| was the first time in her life that she put on an entire
| album to listen to.
|
| And she did appreciate what an experience it was - like
| watching a movie when all you've ever seen were Youtube
| Shorts, or like reading a novel when all you've ever read
| were memes.
| hinkley wrote:
| Most good albums have one song that was never released as a
| single, that's just for the fans. So even beyond the
| "story" the album contaminates, they miss important
| chapters.
|
| Anyone who talks about Tears for Fears, a side conversation
| about The Working Hour will start. Throwing Copper had five
| or six singles released over almost three years, but Pillar
| of Davidson is still my favorite song from that album, and
| one of my favorites overall. I could listen to Kashmir or
| PoD in much the same mood. They just build and build.
|
| It would be similar to Patreon content today (though
| writers with Patreon or magazine articles often release
| collections later that have all of the rarer content.
| Martha Wells is the first to spring to my mind, and Naomi
| Novik for another)
| prepend wrote:
| > One of the things I miss from the pre-streaming era is that
| "nobody" listens to whole albums at a time anymore
|
| I've been looking forward to finding out how Aphex Twin has
| built projects around the streaming format. It may take many
| more years and releases until someone finds out something
| like the ten seconds from 0:30-0:40 on all his tracks work
| when randomly played together in any order, or something
| along those line.
| dvh wrote:
| Alphaville's second album Afternoons in Utopia starts with
| quiet muffled word "night", then followed by few seconds of
| silence and then first song called IAO starts. The last song on
| that album is about Lady Bright: There was a
| young lady named Bright Who's speed was much faster,
| much faster than light She departed one day In
| a relative way And returned on the previous...
| criddell wrote:
| The first words on Pink Floyd's _The Wall_ are "... we came
| in?". The last words on the album are "Isn't this where ...".
| hinkley wrote:
| If memory serves, I believe record players that could flip
| the records were contemporary to the release of The Wall.
| My parents didn't have a flipper but they had a player that
| could play a stack of records and The Wall was the first or
| second LP try bought to play on it.
|
| That definitely works on an auto reversing tape deck, which
| it looks like existed for fifteen years prior.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Pink Floyd 's 'The Wall': A Complete Analysis_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42402981
| joey_spaztard wrote:
| This brings back memories of being a clueless script kid in the
| 1990s.
|
| I knew those tones as CCITT5 tones.
|
| In the days of blueboxing I had a 486 laptop that I acquired
| because the harddrive died and booted from floppys, a DOS program
| called 'The Little Operator' that played tones and a photocopy of
| a book about telephone switching.
| matthiasl wrote:
| You're right; I think CCITT5 is just another name for SS5,
| because different groups were writing standards. Bell called it
| one thing, CCITT (an international standards group) called it
| another thing. And then in the 1990s, the CCITT renamed itself
| to ITU.
| plapsley wrote:
| Yes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_System_No._5
|
| SS5 was derived from AT&T's US MF signaling system, described
| in "Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching" by
| Breen and Dahlbom, Bell System Technical Journal, November
| 1960. PDF here:
| https://explodingthephone.com/hoppdocs/breen1960.pdf
|
| The BSTJ article has a discussion on international signaling
| on pp. 1430-1441.
| plapsley wrote:
| CCITT (ITU-T) version can be downloaded for free (!) from
| their website.
| https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-Q.140-Q.180-198811-I/en
| Specific download link in English is https://www.itu.int/re
| c/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-Q.14...
| qwertox wrote:
| > https://telephoneworld.org/landline-telephone-history/pink-f...
|
| Doesn't the internet still have some pretty places?
| cf100clunk wrote:
| We did that one already:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28858285
| codazoda wrote:
| Young Lust is the song where this operator is heard.
|
| Not being an audiophile, it took me some time to figure out the
| specific song. My brother had The Wall album, and I enjoyed it,
| but I never listened to it on my own. I went back and listened to
| it again for the context.
|
| I really enjoy music but I don't listen to it as often I'd like.
| I think part of the reason is that I have difficulty
| concentrating when there is audio in the background. Some of my
| software engineer co-workers can turn on music or a video while
| they work, but I'm more productive in silence.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I have the same issue. When I turn music on, I can't stop
| focusing on it and losing track of whatever intellectual task
| I'm on. The only thing I can listen to while writing/reading is
| white noise or nature sounds type of thing.
|
| Also, having a show play in the background while I do something
| else like many people love to do? I can't do it.
| hinkley wrote:
| This has changed for me over time. I've been trying to learn
| a new framework and working on leetcode problems. I used to
| put on an old album and go into Flow state, but now it's too
| much at once. I dunno if it's age or just being out of
| practice.
|
| Less than fifteen years an ago someone caught me listening to
| music while watching an old movie and typing on my computer
| at the same time. I was like, I can explain.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| And what us the number in Knocking on Heavens door, the Guns
| n'roses version?
| greenavocado wrote:
| Nice; Now do an analysis of The Telephone Call by Kraftwerk on
| the album Electric Cafe
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Odd that the author thinks this sequence originated with the
| movie, when it's present on the album. He says "we know the
| number is" such and such without saying how.
| weinzierl wrote:
| So we know a couple of digits and the splice points. We also know
| the date. Phone numbers used to be public back then.
|
| It would be fun to grep for the pattern in the matching phone
| book to see if someone in Pink Floyd's circles comes up.
|
| Only problem is to get hold of a digital version of the phone
| book. It strikes me as odd how hard it is to retrieve information
| that used to be so ubiquitous.
|
| Not too long ago police in Germany asked publicly for information
| about certain phone numbers related to the Madeleine McCann case.
| Apparently not even the police has an archive of old phone books.
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