Thread Number: 40565
/ Tag: Other Home Products or Autos
Telephones |
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Post# 430878   8/28/2020 at 22:58 (1,307 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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I also have a small collection of telephones. I collect both corded and cordless phones.
Part of the collection I have is a couple of Bell System phones made by Western Electric. I have two Trimlines, one is beige, and dated 1969, that one has push button dialing, and the star and pound keys. The other is avocado green and dated 1971. It is rotary dial. I also have an avocado green Princess phone, also touch tone with star and pound keys, from 1972. These all have the handset cords where they don't have the modular style plugs but are flat conectors on the Trimlines. The Princess has just wired in connections at each end. The line cords are round, colored and have the four prong jack. The touch tones will dial out via the Comcast VoIP system, the rotary one does not dial out. It would need a pulse to tone converter. |
Post# 430893 , Reply# 1   8/29/2020 at 03:10 (1,307 days old) by MadMan (Chicago, IL, USA)   |   | |
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I have a handful of phones too. I have a rotary dial payphone... been meaning to hang it up on the wall in my room (for 10 years now). I have Western Electric 302, I believe that's what it is. The production date indicates it was built during ww2. So it's neither pre- nor post-war.
Incidentally, I'm looking for a beat up wall phone I can use in my shop. One of the regular old fashioned type, full size, not a trimline. Just in case you got one lying around :P |
Post# 430909 , Reply# 3   8/29/2020 at 08:43 (1,306 days old) by vacuumlad1650 (Wauponsee, IL)   |   | |
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My grandpa was a 40 year employee if Illinois Bell. Even his time spent in the service was installing their telephones and radios.
I've got probably 40 phones scattered around the house and garage...and several are still connected! I haven't had internet and telephone brought to the new house yet...but there's a slough of phones waiting to ring! |
Post# 430913 , Reply# 4   8/29/2020 at 10:11 (1,306 days old) by gottahaveahoove (Pittston, Pennsylvania, 18640)   |   | |
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I don't collect, NOT gonna start, but....
I have a big, white, rotary dial wall phone, a beige desk phone, rotary, rotary slimline, trimline, 2 new digital Western Electric phones, and a beautiful Candlestick phone, a gift from my later mother. It has pulse, but LOOKS like a rotary. It's on my bedside table. Love all these phones. |
Post# 430921 , Reply# 5   8/29/2020 at 10:51 (1,306 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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I always liked the wall phones. My grandparents had a brown one on the wall in their kitchen for years, with rotary dial and the chrome hook for the receiver. Don't know what happened to it, but they replaced it at some point.
The wall and desk phones are still made by Cortelco, in touch tone. As a kid I had a children's book about a family going to buy a new telephone and it had illustrations of many of the Western Electric ones in it, push button and rotary, and other types as well as pay phones. |
Post# 430922 , Reply# 6   8/29/2020 at 10:56 (1,306 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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I don't collect phones either and I'm not about to start but I'm old enough to remember when Western Electric phones were the only ones you could get because AT&T's government-sanctioned monopoly made it illegal to connect any third party equipment to their system.
I don't know whatever became of it but for a long time I had a 1957 vintage black Western Electric desk phone with a metal rotary dial and a handset cord that was straight, not curled. The last Western Electric phone I remember being in service in my family was a green 1960s vintage wall phone with a permanently connected handset cord that my dad proudly paid 50 cents for at a church rummage sale. He put it in the detached garage behind the house. Somehow, carrying a cordless handset out there or leaving one out there on a remote charging cradle was too simple of a solution for him. He took great satisfaction in making things as complex and convoluted as possible. That phone was still in the garage when they moved into a retirement community in 2016. |
Post# 430946 , Reply# 8   8/29/2020 at 17:49 (1,306 days old) by Air-WayCharlie (USA)   |   | |
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I have quite a few old rotary and push button phone including Trimlines, Princesses, 302 black desk, 202 Imperial Anniversary Edition and an a rotary Ericofon.
I have VOIP and when requested to push a number, I dial the number and it reads the pulse with no problem. I still love the sound of the rotary dial and being able to cradle the phones while doing something else. My Trimlines are Princesses are early versions which require an electrical transformer to make the lights work. The Trimline rotary is my favorite of all of them. Back when "Ma Bell", ran the show you rented EVERYTHING from them for a monthly fee. If you wanted a phone other than black it cost extra every month. If you wanted a longer wall cord--extra, longer coiled cord to handset--extra, private listing--extra, more than one jack--extra. When touchtone calling became available--extra. Of course all my sibs and myself wanted a phone other than black and long cords. We finally coerced my father into it! When I was in college touchtone became available and I wanted it in the worst way. I was rooming with my brother, (he was in graduate school and I was in under-graduate school), who kept the budget and said we couldn't afford it. I was already working while attending school and picked up more hours just so we could get that damn touchtone. How the world has changed. Now a cellphone is heart/lung machine for many people or what I sometimes refer to as a prosthetic device. One last thing.....you could not add phones to your existing service as someone mentioned. In junior high school I had a friend whose father worked for Bell. He got me a 302 desk phone that I hooked up myself in our family room. My mother was quite surprised one day when a Bell representative showed up and wanted to look through the house as he said the amperage/voltage was drawing too high for what my parents had which was three phones at the time. She would not let him in. When I got home she let me know in NO uncertain terms that I was to disconnect that phone pronto! |
Post# 430961 , Reply# 10   8/29/2020 at 20:07 (1,306 days old) by vacuumlad1650 (Wauponsee, IL)   |   | |
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Post# 430980 , Reply# 11   8/30/2020 at 02:05 (1,306 days old) by MadMan (Chicago, IL, USA)   |   | |
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As for vintage cordless phones, I remember now I have - somewhere - a 'Muraphone' new in box. It's a cordless with a long metal radio antenna, it looks like a military walkie talkie and it works like one, too - you have to hold the button to talk and release to listen! Come to think of it, I've never actually used it. I don't even remember where the box is.
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Post# 430987 , Reply# 12   8/30/2020 at 09:56 (1,305 days old) by kirby519 (Wisconsin)   |   | |
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Oh yeah I had forgotten about the first cordless phones having a long antenna. I think I have seen a Muraphone but never had a chance use one. Remember the bag car phone? those were nice. |
Post# 431353 , Reply# 14   9/6/2020 at 07:49 (1,298 days old) by kirby519 (Wisconsin)   |   | |
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Post# 431435 , Reply# 15   9/7/2020 at 16:20 (1,297 days old) by gottahaveahoove (Pittston, Pennsylvania, 18640)   |   | |
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Post# 431585 , Reply# 16   9/10/2020 at 10:17 (1,294 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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Post# 432157 , Reply# 18   9/20/2020 at 21:58 (1,284 days old) by fan-of-fans (USA)   |   | |
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I wonder if partly was because phone rates back then were more expensive? Plus in days of party lines, if one was on the phone for too long others would be wanting to use it. Not to mention possibility of others "listening in." Can remember my dad telling in the 50s/60s how women would say "Get off the phone! I need to make a call!"
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Post# 432167 , Reply# 20   9/20/2020 at 23:03 (1,284 days old) by MadMan (Chicago, IL, USA)   |   | |
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When I was a kid, our apartment from the late '20s - a luxury apartment for the time as it had servant's quarters - had a very small hallway connecting two bedrooms and the bathroom, off of the dining room. In there, was a telephone niche. It was maybe 16" wide, 12" deep, had a table top for the phone to rest on, and a big rectangular cover on the wall beneath the table. I'd imagine the cover once would've been a bell box, or whatever it's called. We did actually have a phone there. But being an inconvenient place to hang around while on the phone, I had put a reproduction candlestick phone there. I still have it. It works, though the rotary dial never worked as long as I've had it. But it looked right at home in its niche.
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Post# 432192 , Reply# 21   9/21/2020 at 10:02 (1,283 days old) by human (Pines of Carolina)   |   | |
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I have my grandmother's telephone table. It makes a great nightstand in a small bedroom. I had a girlfriend a few years ago who has her grandmother's telephone chair. It was low-slung with a table and storage underneath. Very mid-century kitch, it was covered entirely in black naugahide. It was a little worn and I kept telling her she should have it re-covered in a zebra print just to max out the kitsch factor. Back in the late '90s, I rented a little house, probably built in the '20s, that had a telephone niche in this cramped little back hallway. It still had two cloth-wrapped wires coming out of the wall but as far as I know, it was not active as there was a modular jack on the baseboard in the living room.
GTE (General Telephone) phones were issued by independent phone companies that were not part of the Bell System (aka AT&T), which issued Western Electric phones. In North Carolina at least, most of the former GTE affiliated phone companies went under the United Telephone banner in the '80s and then became part of Sprint in the '90s. After Sprint spun their landline services off a few years ago, it's now called Windstream. |
Post# 439433 , Reply# 23   3/5/2021 at 14:56 (1,118 days old) by VacTec2 (The Boiler Room Of Hell)   |   | |
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How did your roommate get that phone service to work? |
Post# 439594 , Reply# 24   3/9/2021 at 17:45 (1,114 days old) by electrolux137 (Los Angeles)   |   | |
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Someone gave me the black phone. I've had it for many, many years. Right now it's just sitting on my desk as a decoration. It does work, however.
I have to be careful not to go crazy with collecting phones -- same for typewriters and mimeographs. |
Post# 439601 , Reply# 25   3/9/2021 at 21:23 (1,114 days old) by vacuumlad1650 (Wauponsee, IL)   |   | |
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Post# 439834 , Reply# 27   3/15/2021 at 15:49 (1,108 days old) by JustJunque (Western MA)   |   | |
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I love the Western Electric phones!
We still maintain landline service, and have several rotary and touch tone phones throughout the house. I love that Western Electric 554 wall phone too. That phone, but in ivory, was what my parents had in their kitchen. I've picked up a few of that model over the years, in different colors, including ivory. But, the phone currently in use in our kitchen is a yellow Western Electric 2554. It's smaller than the 554, and it's touch tone. If you've ever noticed the kitchen phone on The Golden Girls, that's pretty much it! Our rotary desk phones are plugged in through Dial Gizmos; a pulse to tone converter, because our service doesn't support pulse dialing. Barry |