A telephone dialling technique that can only be done with a rotary phone. Rotary telephones use timed pulses to encode numbers when dialling, such pulses could be imitated by a skilled user rapidly depressing the hang up mechanism and bypass the dial rotor entirely. The name comes from the action and sound of the dialler hurriedly tapping or "hammering" on the top of the phone. This was done to save time as dialling a rotary phone conventionally could take as long as three seconds to input a single number. If you knew the number you were calling well, you could memorize the pulses and hammer them out yourself in half the time.
"Alan sure is on the phone often, he's even learned to hammer dial the Thompson's house."
"Gee, what would make him call the Thompson's so much that he's hammer dialling their number?"
"Gee, what would make him call the Thompson's so much that he's hammer dialling their number?"
by Stressed Fish January 12, 2023