Landline Telephones

[frigilux]

I keep a landline because of its reliability and because my TiVo's need them to download schedules, etc.

My Dad worked for Bell, briefly, in the early-mid 1960s. He used to travel around giving demonstrations about the future of the phone, demonstrating the new pushbutton models. He came to my school to present a lyceum program and they connected one of the new 'beeping' phones to the P.A. system. I recall him telling us how we'd eventually be able to turn on/off AC/heating systems via phone, order groceries for delivery or pick-up (each item had a numeric code), and even open the garage door (though why someone would call before leaving the office to open the garage door is a bit mystifying). I remember how the kids all laughed at the funny sounds this new-fangled phone made; he played little tunes on it for us. It all seemed so 'Jetsons' at the time, LOL!

And Greg, I believe the ELO song you're recalling is 'Telephone Line'. They also had a song called 'Ma Ma Belle', come to think of it.

 

[buffster]

Veda, Ida and Minx Stole...

Veda,

I'm thrilled to learn that you're also fascinated by phones. Phones and vacuums! What's the connection? But, it's funny... I keep discovering that many of us in this group seem to share similar traits and likes/interests. Hmmmm.... I'm still curious to chat with you about all things Mac. And, I'm always interested in chatting about phones too, though you couldn't find a better resource than our Ida and by the sounds of it Pdub and a few others too. Hmmm... maybe we should set up a phone booth (pun intended) at next year's convention. Food for thought.

Ida,

I love reading/hearing stories about your days at the phone company. It's a hoot! And, we need to chat. Call me when you have a few free minutes. Curious to hear about your week.

Minx,

Love getting your goodies (get your minds out of the gutter boys...). In fact, I've been using the beige rotary Trimline you sent me quite a bit. Love it! And, it is in excellent shape. They really did build them like Sherman tanks.

Alicia...

 

[sudsmaster]

Call Forwarding

For a time I was getting a lot of crank calls. They were fairly predictible, and I didn't have caller ID, so one evening I got fed up and had my phone forward all incoming calls to the local police station.

The crank calls stopped.



I remember when the phone company provided all the phones, and would get very much bent out of shape if you tried to put your own phone on the line ("Where did you get it? Is it stolen?"). Of course that didn't stop us in college from collecting old phones and hooking them up so we could have extension lines without being charged extra by Ma Bell. Then regulations relaxed and the phone company had to let customers buy their own phones at places like Radio Shack and use those.

As for the touch-tone charges, I believe these were eliminated from PacBel/SBC/AT&T residential bills a few years back. I can't find any such charge on my current bill.

 

[rexaircollector]

Patrick/Fred

Remmber the "messenger" callls? They were primarily calls being placed to remote areas in Mexico & South America where there was only 1 phone in the whole town. You would place the call to the 'Messenger center", give the name of the party whom you were calling and they would give a callback time,which could be anywhere from 45 min to 2 hours. They physically went out to give the person the message they had someone calling them and then they would go back to the message center. Oh and the "toll stations". Remember those?? One long and 2 shorts!! LOL

Lil' Fred, looks like you are on your way to getting the Pricess up and running. We have a small collection of phones, all of which work and some being used daily. Will post some pics when I have the chance.

Robb

 

[fnelson487]

Fred

Here is a link to a modular transformer hookup, if you phone has a modular plug. That's how I light my Princess. Your trimline is an early one with the round buttons. Those phones need the transformer but I prefer them because the light is much brighter.

Robb - I remember those calls. I also remember calls up to islands in Canada where I had to go through multiple manual operator boards to get to a subscriber. Also 43 Red ring three! Boy I date myself. In DeKalb, I did it all, 411, toll, inward, rate and route and repair service (on the weekends.)

Here is a picture of what Robb and I would have looked like if we worked together at the toll board. We would have been written up for talking I am sure!

http://oldphoneworks.com/antique-ph...cy=USD&PhonePart=280&Manufacturer=8&Phone=331

 

[launderess]

Just For Leffs

Pipe:

http://pbskids.org/wayback/tech1900/phone.html

 

[launderess]

Team Work Girls, Team Work

Can you imagine?

 

[launderess]

Begin At The Beginning

How did Miss.Kelly get that way?

 

[launderess]

This Would Have Been Moi

Should MaBell ever let me loose on one of their switchboards

 

[whirlcool]

My mother was a telephone operator in Chicago from 1944-49. She said it was very rapid work and yes, the rules were very strict. But she loved it and always gave the thought of returning to the job, but never did.
With all the strange people out there, I wouldn't have the patience.

 

[whirlcool]

Back in the late 70's I used to move our Western Electric phones with me. After the Bell breakup, I tried using the phones that originally came from the Chicago area here in Houston. The phone wouldn't ring, and you couldn't dial, but if someone called in you could talk. One of my neighbors who worked for the phone company came over, took the main part of the phones cover off, rearranged a few wires on what looked like a junction block of some kind and the phone worked just fine after that. He mentioned something about "regional polarity". I think Karen threw that phone away sometime later. It was a desktop touchpad phone.

Western Electric phones always had a particular smell to them.

When I was learning to fly, the tower at the end of the Western Electric building was a good landmark for finding Midway airport. I can't believe they tore that place down. It was HUGE!

Western Electric used to run a contest each year called "Hello, Charlie!" If you were a gal selected, your picture got put on a decal and put on the windshield of Western Electric employees cars. If you saw a car with a "Hello Charlie" sticker, you knew they worked for WE.

A college buddy's Dad worked for Western Electric in Shreveport, LA in the 70's. I don't know what they did there, but they had an office.

I still remember our original home phone number HIckory 7, 1733. I also remember our first grade teacher asking us if we had a phone at home. Some of the kids in the class didn't.

 

[fnelson487]

Lily

Gotta love her. Reminds me of my days at the phone company!

 

[rp2813]

If it hasn't yet become obvious, Ma Bell based her business on a military model and some military terms still survive. Craft employees were part of a "force" and had "tours," not shifts. The discipline and regimentation all stemmed from this military model.

A boss I had at a private company where I once worked was doing post-graduate work in organizational behaviors. She told me I would be surprised at how many businesses are based on military models. I guess Ma Bell just didn't try to hide it.

 

[buffster]

Launderess...

Thank you for sharing those fabulous Youtube clips. They were hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed them and got a good laugh out of it too.

Mike

 

[scott55405]

I do like the phones themselves (particularly the mid century ones) but I have not had a land line since 2002 (I eliminated it in a move), and it's not likely I ever would again. I was never a "phone" person, and even less so since the advent of email, so paying for two phones for one person was just not happening once I no longer needed a phone line to run the computer, and there was no way the cell phone would be the one to go. I like being able to have a phone with me if I need it wherever I go, given how few pay phones there are anymore as Lawrence mentioned, and I like being able to text people.

I don't know if things have changed in the intervening years, but after becoming used to "all inclusive" cell phone plans, I became very annoyed about having to pay extra for long distance calls and having a separate extra charge for every extra feature you had.

 

[launderess]

About Those Bell Telephone Training Films

Bringing this full circle back to appliance related matters, does anyone recongise the voice over in the "Teamwork Toll Calls" training film?

Am almost certian it belongs to a famous appliance spokes/sales person.

 

[launderess]

Buffster -

You are most welcome, hoped members would get a thrill out of those old Bell Telephone training clips. But imagine how the poor young girls as operators in training felt having to sit though all those films (there apparently are/were quite a few).

Military Training At Bell Telephone:

Also took several courses in college regarding behaviour science (was a marketing major after-all), and yes the military is the oft used model for many businesses and companies, especially those with large numbers of workers, who in given areas will be performing similar tasks, day in and day out.

Think about it, who else besides the military has experience in taking vast numbers of persons of all manner and backgrounds, and training them to behave and work as a group for the benefit of the "team" (or in this case a company). You want and need discipline and a firm hand, along with persons who will respond to authority and perform tasks/commands without question and all in the same manner.

Considering Bell Telephone had about 50 divisions (counting each state), and in some large urban areas the number of telephone operators could reach into the hundreds if not thousands. However you don't want each operator doing her/his own thing. As the training film about "team work" showed, MaBell wants each operator to make efficient use of the equipment and company time. You can bet MaBell paid lots of money to have study after study done over the years on how operators worked, and how better to gain productivity out of each worker.

 

[buffster]

Military Training At Bell Telephone

Also, according to what I've read about Ma Bell, the phone company was considered an integral part of our national defense system. This makes sense if you think about the fact that it created a seamless communications infrastructure linking and aligning all parts of the country (and allies) as well as our government and military forces. It's similar to the national freeway system, which for the first time created a way to move tanks and troops cross country. Many felt the breakup of the phone company weakened our civil defense system tremendously.

 

[irishwashguy]

I guess I love old phones and everything about them

I found this on youtube, kind of neat to see what the latest and greatest thing was in 1927

 

[rp2813]

Ritch I really liked hearing the old fashion dial tone, ringing and busy signals in that 1927 clip! A lot of phone exchanges still used those same ones through the 70's and into the 80's, at least here in California where it used to be the case that new products and technology arrived here dead last. My how things change!

 

[phillygrl]

What a wonderful thread, so many memories. When I went away to college, one of my friends was lucky enough to live off campus. This was in a small town outside of Allentown, PA. It had the only independent telephone company between NY and Philly. Family owned and they refused to sell out to Bell. When the phone was hooked up, they receive a candlestick phone. They were still using them as standard equipment. The pay phones were Northern Electric. After the party you called answered you had to get all of your coins in before they hung up. They couldn't hear you until all the coins were in. I don't know how many times I heard "Hello? Hello? Hello-ooo, click. And then you lost all the coins you put in.

After college I moved to my husbands neck of the woods. We ended up outside of Cleveland, OH. The Ohio Bell line stopped a few houses away. We had The Western Reserve Telephone Company who were rushing technologically headlong into the 1960's. Calling Cleveland was a trip. You could hear the relay going cachunk, cachunk, cachunk all the way down the trunk line into Hudson, OH. Then the touchtone beeps after you got into the Bell lines, then the ring. Calling a next door neighbor took twice as long, cachunking into Hudson, cachunking back to our exchange, then a ring. We got touchtone service sometime around 1990.

We also owned a former Ohio Bell truck for awhile. It was one of the wide eyed flat front Dodge panel vans. The drivers seat was frozen in one position, so I couldn't drive the thing. My feet wouldn't reach the pedals.

Still have a rotary phone that we use in the house. An ITT desk model that was in the house when we moved in. You can hear better on that phone than any cordless model.

 

[drmitch]

Our kitchen phone. I love these old phones!

 

[irishwashguy]

Did I mention how much I love telephones? !! Video of assemb

I caught the tail end of having mechanical switching. Where i grew up it was known as a Number five crossbar office. Alot of the Pacific Northwest had them including Salem and Olylimpia, Wa. they were the bread and butter of the phone company. Where i was living we went touch tome in 1984, in the meantime, we spun our wheels. i found out that the old 302's have 433 seperate parts. Reminds me of a Roll a matic and the illistrations that I saw before I attempted to repair one. check this out, you will impressed!

 

[rp2813]

I surfed onto a sitcom Monday night titled, I believe, "The Captain" and it's about a fictional old LA apartment building called "El Capitan." I noticed that along with quirky characters, it also has quirky infrastructure with each apartment having a black rotary dial wall phone mounted in the same spot. I suspect the impression is supposed to be that these phones are wired into the building's old switchboard for calling from unit to unit without an outside line. Fun to see a show where people are using these phones without giving their near-obsolescence a second thought.

 

[toggleswitch]

Hello, Hello is this the person to whom I am speaking?

yup saw that one. I believe it is supposed to be a residence-hotel.

Why is California like a bowl of cereal?
Once you get past the nuts and the fruits it's still full of flakes. (ducks and runs)

Sterotypical L.A. living and personalities are quite interesting from an east coast perspective! Thses characters appear to be all over the place!

Love the character of front-desk attendant "Jesus" (not pronounced the Spanish way, but rather like the religious figure) who is a compulsive busy-body and listens in on the house phone!

 

[hooverwheelaway]

Ugh,

That video of the 302 assembling itself is fabulous!

Here's another fun video of telephone commercials!

~Fred

 

[sudsmaster]

I once working in a university lab where the director has managed to get a whole floor to himself, his own little fiefdom. His secretary had this 40's era intercom system - big and polished wood - and word had it that she would use it to eavesdrop on conversations in various parts of the lab and then report any disloyalty back to the big enchilada. Next to the boss's personal bodyguard, I believe she was the most disliked person in the place. She made Ernestine seem warm and nurturing.

 

[MrX]

1920s Siemens Dial Phone (European)

If you want to see a spooky 1920s Bauhaus inspired designed dial phone, check out this old Siemens phone.

 

[MrX]

A classic 1980s Irish phone!

eircom (then Telecom Eireann) sold these phones in the 1980s as a novelty / collectors item.

They're a fairly standard Northern Telecom Harmony phone built into the shape of a map of Ireland. Standard Irish line connection, should work fine in the US (RJ11 too) but collectors item and apparently retail for a few hundred $ now.

 

[MrX]

This however was more the norm..

In the 1980s, we had quite a lot of these phones for some reason - designed by Henning Andreasen. They were (and still are) really classy looking and were one of the standard issue telecom phones here when I was growing up in the 1980s.