Classic Hifi Care

Are any of you collectors of telephone equipment and "ephemera" (paper documentation)? Back in 1965 my Dad got tired of being tenant and built an office building (prefab from WI). For telephones, the big new deal pushed by MI Bell was a card-dialer phone. You'd punch out spaces on a plastic card to record the number, then push it into a slot and the phone would read it, hole by hole, and dial the number.

The phones are long gone, but I have the instruction book if anybody would like it.

Chris Campbell

We have a telephone enthusiast on the forum. Perhaps he will chime in.

Have about 10 various WE wall, desk 500, Princess, and Trimlines, in various colors, both rotary and pb. No better phones have ever been made imo.

How could I not? Firedome knew I had to chime in, LOL. First, some telephony lingo yes

An "E and M connection" is in technical manuals for this equipment, without being defined. It is literally "ear and mouth" meaning the two-wire signal path, series-wired speaker and microphone.

There were desk telephones that had a card dialer, I had one that had a standard rotary dial. It had the cradle for the handset on the side with a double chrome hook.
There were two rows of storage slots toward the back where a cradle would be. Though I had none, I may have seen a card similar to a business card in size and full of holes about a 1/16" diameter.

Where I got it: I was 11 and powering 6-12v tube car radios off train transformers, a neighbor left his rented office in the Philadelphia (Bell territory) and decided the 4 pushbutton black phones and about two of those card-dialer models (WE of course) were his to unplug and take with him like furniture. The cables were the 25-copper pair with multi-pin plugs common use then. He knew I would wire them up and I did, connecting 2-3 "intercom" phones at the pool we had 100 feet from the house, with a 12 volt battery and all that pretty twisted pair 22 gauge.

If I have the "card phone" yet, Ill post a picture. I have about 10 WE, Northern Electric, GTE phones. There was a GTE territory adjacent to our "local telco" which was commonly referred at as a baby bell. We had Northern Electric phones made Canada. Similar to WE but GTE phones were the most robust in my opinion.

Like all things seemed indestructible if made in Chicago, and GTE's phones were made there by Standard Electric I think. The ring tone and bells were different on GTE systems and there are Youtube videos of this past interest.

This video is "off the hook"...enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1zOewxmUC20

Yeah, that's it. Click-click-click. I've got the user manual--how to punch the cards and use the phone. And, of course, how to clean it. Raise your hand if you know what the book says. Bet you do. "Simply use a damp cloth...."

Chris Campbell

TC Chris wrote: ↑Thu Jun 30, 2022 1:56 am Yeah, that's it. Click-click-click. I've got the user manual--how to punch the cards and use the phone. And, of course, how to clean it. Raise your hand if you know what the book says. Bet you do. "Simply use a damp cloth...."

Chris Campbell

I collest old field and dial phones. I have several different models. I usually get ones that have piqued my interest over the years. As opposed to trying to go over them all, here is a link to my collection thread on a collector's website I'm a member of.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/foru ... ic=13685.0

Cool phones, Rex, thanks for sharing.

Bill

Who was Northern Electric? I've got an old NE dial phone that served on an extension at my last house. Out in the shop I have the WE wall dial phone from my parents' first house (1951). Still working fine. Durable technology is cool.

I guess we should salvage the WE phones, a wall phone and a couple Trimlines, when we sell my Mom's house?

Chris Campbell

Northern Electric was Bell Canada's manufacturing arm, like Western Electric in the US. Like Western Electric, They also manufactured small appliances at various times.

The first phone I bought was in the late sixties. I wanted a phone of my own badly and saved up and sent away for a new surplus AE 40 desk phone from Burden's Surplus Senter in Nebraska. There was a block in my bedroom and I tried to work out how to connect it properly, as there were no guides in making illegal phone installlations. I finally got it worked out and had it in my room a couple of days when my best friend's dad came to visit, professionally. He was a lineman for the Indiana Bell Telephone Company. They had detected an extra phone at our house and he went up and disconnected it. He said "It's okay, you can have a phone. Just don't connect it into our system! That's why I have a AE 40 now. It was the phone I'd always wanted.

19&41 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 12:50 am They had detected an extra phone at our house and he went up and disconnected it. He said "It's okay, you can have a phone. Just don't connect it into our system! That's why I have a AE 40 now. It was the phone I'd always wanted.

If you had disconnected the ringer, would they have known you had the extra phone? I remember those days and have some vague recollection that if they could not detect the current load from extra ringers, they wouldn't know. Too late now, of course.

My '51 wall phone in the shop is a black (of course)WE 354 model. My kitchen right now sports a yellow 554 dial wall phone. When Bell stopped owning the phones they cleverly offered them to us for sale, so I bought my model 500 desk set in red, and also have an olive green one. My Mom's house contains a 500 (black) and 554 (white). Her cottage has a 500 in white. All dial phones. And when the power goes out, they keep working.

Chris Campbell

TC Chris wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 1:59 am

19&41 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 12:50 am They had detected an extra phone at our house and he went up and disconnected it. He said "It's okay, you can have a phone. Just don't connect it into our system! That's why I have a AE 40 now. It was the phone I'd always wanted.

If you had disconnected the ringer, would they have known you had the extra phone? I remember those days and have some vague recollection that if they could not detect the current load from extra ringers, they wouldn't know. Too late now, of course.

I was only 12 and not quite up on the proper things to do to remain udetectable.

Ok, I need to ask. Was the phone company that sophisticated that they could tell when a phone was added that they did not provide? If so, that just blows my mind.

Bill

Don’t know about phone detection capability but one time WE and Bell labs had some of the best technology in the world, it was Shockley, Bardeen et al at Bell Labs who invented the transistor.

William wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 11:26 am Ok, I need to ask. Was the phone company that sophisticated that they could tell when a phone was added that they did not provide? If so, that just blows my mind.

Yes, consider your mind blown. Adding non-Western Electric, non-leased equipment was absolutely verboten. I think they could detect current draw.

Chris Campbell

Firedome wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 1:36 pm Don’t know about phone detection capability but one time WE and Bell labs had some of the best technology in the world, it was Shockley, Bardeen et al at Bell Labs who invented the transistor.

This illustrates the pluses and minuses of monopoly regulation. Bell Labs and the Bell System's bullet-proof, durable, reliable equipment were two big pluses. The biggest minus was the suppression of innovation at low cost. Think portable phones and then cell phones. These days everybody has a cell phone, even my low-income clients. Most of them don't have landlines, which are costly.

Bell Labs gave us all sorts of cool stuff besides the transistor. They had phenomenal engineering, creating the 300B triode, wonderful theater amplifiers, speakers worth 6 figures or more today, and all sorts of other things.

Chris Campbell

This thread had me putting my birthday (9-56) 500 back on the computer desk. Only bad thing is when it rings, It's hard to tell if it's the phone or the TV.