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seamusuk

seamusuk

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 18, 2006
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Location
Dover Kent UK
Hey Guys

As some of you may already know(if not you do now lol) my other main collection apart from Hoovers comprises of classic landline phones. Today, whilst poking around a kinda flea market place called Snoopers Paradise in Brighton I came across something ive wanted for years....

A Bell System 500 desk set!!!!!! :-)

It dials out fine but needs playing with to get it to ring on the UK system- once it does it will be great to have that FANTASTIC!! US ringer(in a slightly different form tho- we have a double ring as oppased to the US single one).

What im curious to know is what area of the US it came from- its marked as being the property of(and was later sold by)The New Eng Tel And Tel Co(New England Telegraph and Telephone company????). The original number card is for 617-532 3177. It has a modular handset cord and is stamped 9-70 on the base.

Any info is much appreciated :)

Seamus
 
I am a phone collector too!

I have a completely operational WE 556A switchboard. That number was somewhere around the Boston MA area. Back then the area codes were much larger than they are now. Now it would probably be Boston but 617 would have extended farther out back in the 70s. That's when I was a telephone operator in college and knew most of the US area codes.
 
Hey Fred

Cheers for the info :)

The ringing has been partially sorted (Modem leads are wired differently to phone ones apparenty :)- however it isnt as loud as it should be, im guessing modern line voltages/ringing voltages are lower than they used to be :(.

Its in very good condition with just a dirty handset cord to sort- another thing I was very struck by is although its the light blue colour(sure it has a proper name lol) it has NO discolouration- the outside is exactly the same as the inside, a lot of phones ive seen on Ebay in the blue appear to have discoloured quite a bit!

Seamus
 
Hmmm 9-70 is probably the mfrs date but I didn't think the modular plugs (the current style mini-jack) was introduced until around 74 or 75, possibly 73. Prior to that most were hardwired in, you paid extra to have 4 prong jacks as you did for having a phone in a color other than black usually or an extra long cord. It's also possibly that your phone might have been refurbished because up until the early 70's Bell and GTE didn't allow customer owned equipment.
 
If area 617 then can be 978 now,

Then the number is today assigned in Peabody MA. You can fill in the blanks yourself if you so wish.
 
Sounds like vintage Western Electric to me. 9-70 would be pre-modular but as was mentioned above, that phone was made when customers weren't allowed to own their own, so it was likely turned in at some point and refurbished with modular connections and then either rented again or sold.

I don't know that the short double-ring would change to a long single ring just based on the phone itself as I believe the ring pattern is sent from the switching office. You can make it ring louder by going in and fooling with the actual bell cups themselves. The holes for the screws are slightly off center and you can rotate the cups closer to or further from the striker if adjusting the thumbwheel on the bottom doesn't make it ring loud enough.

New England Telephone merged and became "NYNEX" (New York-New England Exchange or some such name) and then became Bell Atlantic, which Verizon (formerly GTE) ended up buying. I work for the company that is currently masquerading as AT&T but it's actually being run by a bunch of cowboys out of San Antonio, and I think now that Bell South has been swallowed up the merger mania will stop. Nobody wants the sorry financial mess that is Quest, the last surviving individual "Baby Bell" that was created when the true "Ma Bell" was broken up in 1984, and which serves a vastly unpopulated corner of the western U.S.

Enjoy your phone! The thrift stores here in the U.S. are full of those things so you could go on a real spree if you ever get over here as they go for about $5 or so.
 
Common as the 500 sets are though a blue one is a rarer bird as are the yellows. I think the vast majority of folks stuck to black or tan. Greens and reds seem to pop up as well but still not so much as black/white/tan.
 
Just like the movies!

Hi Seamus! Is this the same sort of phone you're on about (I know this is a wall version ) but I have a brown desk top one too. Both, I bought from an UK seller on Ebay. They work fine and have that great ring sound ( although in a ring ring format )that we are used too seeing in Amercian movies and Tv shows! However the kitchen phone is difficult to make people hear what you are saying. I can hear callers fine, but not them me, unless I shout directly in to the mouth piece. Has any one any ideas? Does it need a new microphone? Any help would be great !

Thank you Richard


8-9-2006-15-54-50--ricky5050.jpg
 
Richard, if you haven't already.. unscrew the mouthpiece cap, the mic disk should fall right out. They sort of sit there on two metal springy tabs. Are the tabs clean, also the metal connecting ring that encircles the microphone disk. Some light emory cloth should work.. If that doesn't work and providng all the connections on the handset and into the phone are tight you might need a replacement mic disk which can be found all over around here. I can probably send you one eventually but we're in the midst of a cross country move so it could take awhile..
 
Hey Richard

Yep....

Mines the desk version in that colour(will post a pic when ive found my camera drivers lol). I paid £18 for it- would have been more but the seller had tried a UK line cord on it and couldnt get it to ring- fortunatly I remembered reading somewhere you have to use a modem cable instead(the wiring in the plug on the phone end goes to the 2 centre instead of the outside terminals!). The only gripe as it dosent ring that loudly, even after some manual adjustment of the gongs inside- I put this down to the fact that modern exchanges probably send a lower voltage for the ring current, also I have a NTL phone line which may make a difference??.
I LOVE the dial tho-its so quick and smooth compared with a UK one as you know!

Cheers
Seamus
 
Pete...

Am I correct in saying the Bell System only rented phones to start with(in the same way as the General Post Office (GPO) did over here and if you managed to "unofficialy come by" one you had to take the ringer out of circuit before you hooked it up as the phone Co used to check the resistance on lines to see how may ringers/phones were connected??.

Seamus
 
Seamus, exactly right. BTW Bell and its affiliates were certainly not the only phone providers in the US or Canada, only the largest. GTE (General Telephone of New York) was another biggie. There were also and still are numerous independents operating for the last 100+ years in small towns all over who never caved and got swallowed up by the other two. They may have as little as 100 customers for example, maybe less and be smack in the middle of the giants territory like a pimple on an elephants arse.
 
PeteK ...modular phones were introduced in the US in 1972

and a lot of the older hardwired phones were retro fitted wiith modular cords starting in the mid 1970's. Bell would do this when phones would get turned in and slap a sticker on them giving the date they were reconditioned (i.e. I have a 500 that was originally made in 1963 that was refurbished in January of 1976 and a 554 wall phone that was originally produced in 1959 but was refurbed and installed in my moms kitchen in October of 1976). Also starting circa 1975 when you ordered a telephone from Western Electric or ITT you could specify just how modular you wanted the phone to be. Fully modular meant both the reciever cord and the line cords to the wall were modular, 1/2 modular meant that the reciever cord was hardwired but the line to the wall was modular, and 1/4 modular meant that the phone was hardwired except at the end of the wall cord where it had the modular plug to plug intro the now standard RJ11 phone jack.Non modular meant that the phone was completely hardwired. I believe they stopped doing this after a few short years though. FYI to the English gentleman Seamus and ricky5050, the wall phone ricky5050 has is known as the 554 which was introduced in 1956 and made to 1986 and the desk version is the 500 which was made form 1949 to 1986.
Hope this info helps some. PATRICK COFFEY
 
Oh I forgot to mention....

The reason why black, rose beige(tan),and white are the most common 500 phone colors is because those colors did not cost extra like red, aqua, moss green, etc. did. PATRICK COFFEY
 
Ha ha that brings back memories...a friend was a Teamster truck driver and often brought back interesting things from job sites. After his co. demolished a convent he came home with black telephones. Gen-you-wine Western Electric telephones. This was the day when the phone was rented. My dad put it in the basement and we were NEVER supposed to dial out on it...only could answer the phone or listen in on a phone call from upstairs.
 

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