# A Solar Labyrinth: Dialing

*The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 05 Jul 1998*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/923>

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### Robert Borski
*05 Jul 1998, 22:04*

While I think William Ansley's rebuttal of my tv-as-labyrinth theory was
well argued, and I enjoyed prion's alternate intrepretation, I still feel
compelled to quote the following from Gene Wolfe's Introduction to STOREYS
FROM THE OLD HOTEL:

"'A Solar Labyrinth' is another favorite. Labyrinths seem to fascinate just
about everyone, and for a while I was almost equally interested in what
used to be called dialing."

"Dialing," for those who of us who first came to tv in the late 40s/early
50s, involved the manual tuning in of a television station, which in those
days, before the advent of remotes and solid-state electronics and
broadcasting standards, had to be done by hand on a station-by-station
basis--very similar to how radio still is on occasion, when you have to
nudge the selection dial to pick it up better. Sometimes as well the
channels would drift, and you would have to retune them, and sometimes you
just plain couldn't dial them back in at all, so you'd often miss the end
or beginning of your program.

We don't call it dialing it any more (although the construction of sun
dials is *still* called that), because it's been made obsolete by
technology. 

Not that I'd expect any of you "kids" to know that, of course.

Grampa Scolex (who, yes, still misses the old days)

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### William H. Ansley
*06 Jul 1998, 01:20 · follows Robert Borski*

> Robert Borski wrote:
> "'A Solar Labyrinth' is another favorite. Labyrinths seem to fascinate just
> about everyone, and for a while I was almost equally interested in what
> used to be called dialing."
> 
> "Dialing," for those who of us who first came to tv in the late 40s/early
> 50s, involved the manual tuning in of a television station, which in those
> days, before the advent of remotes and solid-state electronics and
> broadcasting standards, had to be done by hand on a station-by-station
> basis--very similar to how radio still is on occasion, when you have to
> nudge the selection dial to pick it up better. Sometimes as well the
> channels would drift, and you would have to retune them, and sometimes you
> just plain couldn't dial them back in at all, so you'd often miss the end
> or beginning of your program.
> 
> We don't call it dialing it any more (although the construction of sun
> dials is *still* called that), because it's been made obsolete by
> technology.

Hi, Robert.

I hope you realize that I am not going to take anything you post to this
list seriously ever again. I mean, you *know* you are not going to convince
me that Wolfe meant "manual tuning in of a television station" by dialing
(assuming *anyone* ever did). You even give the only reasonable
interpretation ("the construction of sun dials") in your post, which I've
quoted above. If we are going to go with less likely possibilities, why not
dialing the telephone? (I am old enough to remember when *phones* had
dials.)

So you were having a little fun with us. Well, I fell for it - hook, line
and sinker. But from now on I'll try to go along with the gag and read all
of your posts with a shaker or two of salt.

William Ansley

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