Keeping Up Appearances appliances

[alexialex94]

The Telephone

"looks suspiciously like a U.S. Western Electric Slim-line. (Where is Alex from the Vacuum Forum?)"

Hyacinth's Pear white telephone was a British Telecom (BT) Minstrel phone, the first phone to have last number redial I believe.

Here is a little info on it for all interested.

http://www.britishtelephones.com/t5011.htm

 

[gusherb]

The shell is a very close copy to the Western Electric Trimline phone.

 

[alexialex94]

Indeed so, the BT Minstrel was not out until the early 90s and is far more advanced than a WE trimline.

 

[fan-of-fans]

Ah, so that would explain why she always made it a point that she was calling on a "white slimline pushbutton telephone with automatic redial".

Of course there was one episode where she had that flip phone. "I'm calling you on my mobile phone with caller and one touch facility". "I did tell you I'm now on a mobile phone, Elizabeth?"

"Make sure it's fully charged Richard."

And, one of the microwaves:

 

[alexialex94]

We had a compact phone in the 60s (same time the WE trimline was out...60s) it was called the GPO (Now BT) trimphone.

Looked like this (pic bellow)...It had a buzzer for the ringer which made the infamour cricket sound to the ring, as apose to the regular 700 series GPO telephones woth the double gong bells, which just made the traditional "ring ring, ring ring" the trimphone came in rotary dial or later, push button.

There was also a GPO rotary compact phone, which had a ringer separate to the phone it's self, which was fitted away frtom the phone...Much like the WE Princess phone.

Here is the trimphone on the first pic. The regular traditional 700 series telephone (706 left and later 746 right) second pic. The compact phone with bells seperate to the phone, third pic.

Both the Trimphone and 746 telephones were available in push button varients later on in the 70s, although, they were not touch tone.
The trimphone was only sold up until 1980 I believe, 80s version of the 746 that were push button were touch tone I believe...I could be wrong though.

 

[alexialex94]

There you go, some more info on the Minstrel...

http://www.phone-pages.org.uk/minstrel.htm