Number PULEAZE! Part One:

[vacerator]

Do we have

your mumba Mr. Jeffries, do we have your numba?
Name the movie.
Hint; Mahalia Jackson sings "Trouble" at the end.

 

[beekeyknee]

This thread is especially poignant for me at this time as I just had my landline disconnected. I had that same number for 32 years. I agree with Eddie that working as a telephone operator at that time was surely miserable. I resented paying long distance fees to talk to my cousins that were only 100 miles away, but the connection was always perfect.I'm sure having the old woman pacing up and down the line whacking people with a pencil was infuriating. I eventually whittled it down to a POTS line and I even had them take off the long distance too, to save money. I did all this to try and keep the price down and it helped for awhile, but the price kept going up all the time. Paying $40.00 + for something I rarely used or just to have around to irritate me (telemarketers and machines asking me stupid questions) seemed pointless.

My sister had an extra space on her cell plan and she put me on that. No bill at all now. She's in a different area code and I rarely get any telemarketer calls.

The lady at the phone company said I could have my landline back any time I wanted. I'm a bit skeptical about that. She tried to offer me a discount of a few dollars to keep me on, but I told her that it would just go up in a few months and I'd be back where I started so I told her, 'Thank you anyway'.

My friend who lives upstairs from me said he has some kind of a machine that screens calls before your phone rings. I can't remember the name of the machine right now. The person calling hears the line ring but your phone doesn't ring. The machine picks up the line and requests the caller to enter the proper code to talk to a certain person. If they know the code and enter it, then your phone will ring in a particular manor or sequence and you will have an idea who it might be, depending on who you have given the code to. There are several codes so you'll know who's calling. If I ever get a landline again, it sounds like a must have.

 

[joeekaitis]

FaceTime, 1960s style

 

Now you pull a phone out of your pocket to do it, and for a lot less than $16.00 for three minutes

 

[rp2813]

Phone Project

Here's the phone niche in our 1922 house.  I'm wondering if it was original or added later.  Usually there's a recessed space below with some sort of screening material on the front, which is designed for placement of the subset (aka bell box), and I don't recall ever seeing one like ours.

 

The plan is to relocate the jack from the upper corner and mount a subset on the front of the lower section.  The severed original wires are visible in the basement and are fairly easy to access for reactivation.  This will function as the main ringer that can easily be heard from anywhere inside the house, and likely outside as well when windows are open. 

 

While I don't envision myself or anyone else choosing to talk on the phone in this location, I figure that as long as there's going to be a live connection there, I might as well have the phone serve as something more than just a prop.  I'll leave this same manual phone there rather than one with a dial.  I don't intend to initiate any calls here, but there might be incidents where I would answer one.

 

My research on the GI<span style="font-size: 8pt;">BRALTAR</span> exchange indicates this phone belonged to a mom & pop local exchange provider somewhere in Arizona.  The F1-W handset is also a dead giveaway that Western Electric produced this for use by an independent provider as opposed to the Bell System.  The Bell System phones don't have the "W" designation on their handsets.

 

[cornutt]

This thread needs some switchgear

AT&T #1 crossbar, New York 1938. Link is to the page where the photo came from.

Electromechanical Telephone-Switching

ethw.org

 

[cornutt]

1923 AT&T panel switch

This one is now in the Museum of Communications in Seattle; I'm not sure where it came from. This was AT&T's first automated switch design, before the crossbar. Incredibly costly and complicated, these types of switches were only installed in big urban areas where the call rates justified the cost.

 

[cornutt]

Everybody loves a step switch

An Automatic Electric step switch operating (and making an incredible amount of noise) in Weedsport, NY, in 1990.

 

[twintubdexter]

<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">The house I grew up in had one of those telephone niche things in the hallway. I guess people didn't mind standing up while carrying on a conservation, there was little or no room for a chair. The phone had long ago been moved to a more convenient location, so my mom kept a big plaster religious statue in the niche. If you moved the statue you could see the phone jack behind it...St. Anthony calling. The only other religious statue I remember was a plastic magnetic one on the dash of our Oldsmobile. </span>

 

[gusherb]

That was so relaxing to watch I almost fell asleep. Very little fascinates me more than electromechanical telephone switches.

 

[rp2813]

Cool panel switch video!

 

Locally, we had one last 5 xbar switch that Pacific Bell took forever to upgrade and cutover to a 1A.  We were fielding complaints from subscribers in that exchange for a long time because they wanted Call Waiting and the xbar switch couldn't support it.  I think it was 1992 before that switch was upgraded, over a dozen years after the neighboring exchange got a 1A.  That xbar may have been the last of its kind Pac Bell territory, or at least in one of their major urban exchanges.

 

[iowabear]

Wow - 1992.

 

The custom calling features provided by ESS were featured in that 1962 Seattle World's Fair video.  30 year wait for them!

 

[rp2813]

Yeah Jim, as I stated above, Pacific Telephone was Ma Bell's ugly stepchild.  They had a lot of catching up to do after the modified final judgement for divestiture of the "Baby Bells" by AT&T effective 1/1/84. 

 

Joe, let me guess.  The Oldsmobile was home to St. Christopher, and he was glued to the speaker grille.  As for St. Anthony, was your mom always losing things?

 

[toploader55]

Ha !

I forgot about that Ralph. Yes, it seemed many cars back in the 50s to late 60s had St. Christopher on the Dash. My Dad had a St. Christopher medallion he kept in the Glove Box as he did not like anything on the dash nor did he ever have a bumper sticker or a Dealer's plaque or License plate frame with any message or advertising.

No Hi Jack.

 

[Ultramatic]

Bell Telephone 1958

 

 

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[rp2813]

All of our extension phones were bootlegged in by my dad.  He disabled their ringers, as the level of current during the ring cycle was monitored by Ma Bell to detect any equipment they didn't know about and could charge for.  He routed all of the wires through a false electrical box covered with a porcelain light bulb receptacle that was attached with a single screw so it could be swung out of the way.  A single pair of alligator clips connected all of the extensions to the adjacent telephone terminal block.  If ever there was a call for service, he'd go down and unclip the wires and shove them into the decoy electrical box behind the porcelain receptacle.

 

My room didn't have a phone, so one day when I was 7 or 8 I took it upon myself to install one.  I got an old oval base phone off a shelf in the garage and proceeded to take it upstairs and stick the wires into an electrical outlet.  Of course the smoking began immediately and I ran out of the room.  My older sister had to go in and yank the phone out of the wall.  There was a black mark on that outlet for many years afterward, and my dad was not at all happy that I had ruined that old phone. 

 

[48bencix]

Model 300

In Martinez, CA we had the Western Electric Model 300 with no dial. We had operators until the late 1950's when Pacific Bell came to the house and added a dial to that same phone. We had an additional extension installed at the same time. That phone was there for decades.

When I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco in 1969 my roommate insisted that we get touch tone service. I think it was an extra $6 per month.

I still have my ATT copper land line and it is copper to the pole and after that I do not know. It may be fiber to the box on the next street that was put in for Uverse services. I keep it because I think it may work when the power goes down like it always used to. I have heard ATT will eventually get rid of the copper lines. I have a cell phone but don't trust the robustness of the system. There is little regulation of the system, for instance no generators are required at cell tower locations. I have two Cortelco Phones that look like Western Electric and have real bells in them. I donated my other phones when I found out how little they are really worth.

 

[xraytech]

I have this lovely Western Electric model in my living room. My grandparents had it since their marriage in 1952, I assume it was a used unit at that time.
I’m undecided on which exchange I want in center of the dial.
Should I go with the LUther7 number my grandparents had, or if I should use my WHitney7 number.

 

[supersuds]

I would go with your current exchange. Having the (correct) phone number in the center of the dial is a classy touch.

Thanks for explaining about the ringers, Ralph. Our first extension phone (a curious hybrid of a 500 base and a long, heavy 300 handset) had no ringer and that must have been why.

 

[Ultramatic]

Future kitchen phone...

 

 

 

This Western Electric 554 was manufactured in June 1962. The modular plate has a date of June 1982. It was amazingly filthy when I got it last year. Cord is new. Even the wall jack will be age appropriate.

[this post was last edited: 11/17/2018-22:53]

 

[wayupnorth]

Thats the white one in my garage, so that is a 554. I forgot after I left the phone company all the phone model numbers. I just know a landline phone can go my closest switching station still and go thru. Cell service is spotty, at best in Maine without going thru costly International roaming from Canada. They have the towers close to our border but the big cell services cant be bothered with giving decent service around here because we are all forests and lakes. I'll keep my stupid TracPhone that can make and receives calls. Someday I may get one with camera when I can use one.