Seinfeld Declassified Episode 18: Is it really possible for lines to cross?

We continue our season six trek with one of the more memorable episodes, the chinese woman. So our story kicks off with Jerry discovering his line got crossed with some woman known as Donna Chang. This leads to a lot of hijinks and shenanigans, as you might imagine, but it got a lot of us thinking: is it actually possible for lines to get crossed?

Well, as it turns out, it is. You see, digital telephony is transmitted in packets but analog telephony is not which means there are a few different ways in which your phone line can pick up another conversation. One of them is if your conductors become untwisted and run parallel to each other. It can also occur if you have a wet section of your cable with a high resistance fault. This can lead to your cable acting as an antenna and picking up other people’s phone conversations or even radio activity (including CB).

Sometimes, it’s just a case of your phone wire being left in a loop which leads to your circuit being connected to someone else’s house (which I think is what happened in Jerry’s case). Not much is known about how to uncross them but it seems the only way is by calling in a professional. So do these kinds of line crossings still happen today? Well, nowadays most people use digital telephony in the form of cell phones. However, phones are not identified by their phone numbers but, rather, the IMEI numbers they have been assigned (international mobile equipment identity).

So, yes, theoretically, it is still possible but it happens a lot more seldom now than it did back then. But this was definitely a fun little history lesson for those of us too young to remember the marvel that was the landline. And we would like to send a special thank you to David Dolch for helping us out with this episode. So thank you guys so much for reading, have a great week and I will see you back here tomorrow for a brand new episode of SD. Until then, this is the x factor signing off.