I remember, as a kid, wondering whether the clicking of the rotary dial could be simulated by clicking the hook button rapidly. It worked! I could dial the phone by simply tapping the hook button.

At one point I tried connecting a simple speaker (from a little transistor radio I had taken apart) directly to the phone line. I got a dial tone. By connecting one wire to the speaker terminal, and tapping the other wire on the other terminal, I could dial a phone number. Those old phones were really very simple things.

No idea if the phone network still supports pulse dialing. I'd guess it does, but haven't tried it.