Party line (telephony) ||This article needs additional citations
for verification. (January 2008)| In twentieth-century telephone
systems, a party line (also multiparty line or shared service
line) was an arrangement in which two or more customers were
connected directly to the same local loop. Prior to World War II
in the United States, party lines were the primary way
residential subscribers acquired local telephone service.
British users similarly benefited from the party line discount.
Farmers in rural Australia used party lines, where a single line
travelled miles from the nearest town out to one property then
the next. Originally, in order to distinguish one line
subscriber from another, operators developed different ringing
cadences for the subscribers, so that if the call was for the
first subscriber to the line, the ring would follow one pattern
such as two short rings, if the call was for the second
subscriber, the ring would sound another way, such as a short
ring followed by a long one, and so on.