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I noticed this too Ralph. Also, the ad suggests that the telephone extensions could be used like an intercom throught out the home. This is a first for me. I guess their must have been some kind of internal bell system to alert occupants the someone in the home had a message to relay?

The ad also suggests that customers have more than one telephone line in the home. Only the well heeled could have entertained this as an option.

Back when I got my first phone most of the economically challenged just had a 25 ft. cord installed so they could carry the phone from room to room and avoid the extra monthly charge for an extension.

I agree with you Ralph, this ad was surely a pre Crash ad, but a great window into the times.

Eddie
 
Ringer Box

I notice the 1929 ad said nothing about the ringer. Didn't all phones of that era require a separate ringer box for each phone? And how much would those cost to install in each room you wanted?
 
The 1929 Bell System ad is obviously one targeted to a more affluent audience. It most likely appeared in magazines purchased mainly by upper-class ladies.

I would think the subset including ringer would have been mounted to the wall where the maid is plugging in the cord. In a fancy installation, it may well have been recessed into the wall with a grill over it.

As for the intercom feature, there would have been equipment somewhere in the building to provide power, amplification, and signalling for that service. I was in an old house when I was a kid that had such a system at one time. It had long been disconnected by then. An old wall phone was still mounted in a back hallway, and I remember there being some type of switch next to it to select between outside and inside lines. I also remember a lot of old phone wires, and some boxes and connections fastened to a wooden panel in the basement.

My Aunt Doris had intercom on her phones, but that was part of the 1a2 system they had installed in the 70's, which also had two outside lines.

We only had one line, but also an extension in the basement. When we moved into the house in Aug. 1957, my parents had most of the interior of the house repainted. The living room, dining room and hall were painted light gray, so when the phone was installed, my mom chose one in gray - an AE model 80. That was AE's version of the WE 500. The old phone - an AE model 40 in black - was moved to the basement. I always though it was much better looking than the 80. It eventually was replaced with a wall phone, and the phone guy took it away. I found out later on that he had a wonderful collection of older AE phones, which I imagine our old one was among.
As for other color phones, the public library a couple blocks away had an AE 80 in light green.
 
<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">I suppose the silhouette of a falling  body outside that window would have helped narrow down the advertisement's 1929 date even more.</span>
 
When I was a teenager and we first moved to the Northern California Coast we had a 5 party line, yes FIVE. Our ring was 1 long and 1 short and our number was Russian Gulch #3.

To place a call you lifted the receiver and the operator would come on the line and you requested the number you wished to call. If it was someone else on the party line you could of course hear their ring in your house too. And you knew they answered just like any other call, when they came on the line.

When I turned 13 my Mom was in Brooklyn, visiting my stepfathers sister. It took her over an hour to convince an operator there that you really could call such a number as Russian Gulch #3, they all thought Mom was either drunk, crazy or both, until she finally got a supervisor that believed her. They had to get the Santa Rosa, Calif.operator on the line to ring down our number, and this was 1964.

Eddie
 
Ralph, in 1971 the area where my Mom lived went to dial phones, the last area in Sonoma Co. to finally get dial service, but any direct dialed LD still went thru CAMA for billing. This was so for all areas of Sonoma Co., except Santa Rosa, until about 1980. At that time CAMA was retired and all direct dialed LD went thru without any operator assistance.

For those that don’t know what CAMA was, it is an acronym for Centralized Automated Message Accounting. It was a board in the main traffic office that the direct dialed LD calls reached, where an operator came on the line and announced, “Your number please”. The caller gave their number, which was keyed in by the CAMA operator and then the call when thru the switching system to be connected. The number was of course keyed in so the caller could be billed for the call. While I was an operator I spent many hours on CAMA, a virtually mindless job.

Eddie
 
My Grandparents didn't get "Dial Service" until 1967.  The phone was a plain black phone with no dial at all.  When you picked up the receiver a central operator would ask you for "Number Please" If you wanted to make a long distance call you would say "Long Distance" and she would transfer you to another operator that took care of the long distance calls.

Their number was 328.  

 

Bob
 
Ralph,

these posts help us all to remember that there once was a time that a telephone call was somewhat special, not something that was screened for potential scams. Fifty years ago it was pretty much unheard of for anyone to be using the telephone to defraud the public on a mass scale.

Now, I almost never answer the phone when it rings, and only if I recognize the number and/or the caller. In my youth it would have been unheard of to not answer the phone when it rang. My how times have changed!

Eddie
 
" Now, I almost never answer the phone when it rings, and only if I recognize the number and/or the caller. In my youth it would have been unheard of to not answer the phone when it rang. My how times have changed! "

Boy you said it Eddie.

I was just this morning talking to a friend about how you would Love when the phone rang and the anticipated tone of the "Hello" as to "Who is this calling" would be so nice.

Now you get aggravated every time the phone rings especially when you don't recognize the number.

I remember also there was a time when you got home and you had a list of calls to make so you had the Long Cord on the wall phone so you could start supper with the phone wedged under your chin. Quite the balancing act and coordination to pull off dinner with two hands while talking.

Fun Times back then.
 
Now That’s Pathetic!

these kids are old enough to be able to reason out that each hole on the dial corresponds to the numbers that need to be dialed. Common sense would dictate that you would need to pull the dial to the stop for each number dialed. Wow, they can probably figure out the most complex issues with a computer,but a simple, old fashioned dial telephone stumps them! Almost makes me wonder if they know which end is up?

Eddie
 
Wow Eddie -- those kids likely haven't ever watched an old movie or TV show, or didn't care about scenes that captured someone dialing an outbound call.

 

I've yet to connect any of my old rotary phones at our new house, but that day is coming.
 
Telephone Instruments As Intercoms

I just went back and looked at the extension phone ad.  How exactly would an intercom system work when the telephone set(s) had no dial, such as the one pictured in the ad?  Some sort of Morse-inspired use of the switch/receiver hook?
 
As I get older and see stuff like these two boys that can't dial a phone I get very afraid.

(And feel Old) ; )

Why would they watch an old movie ? No Sex, Violence and Blood. Better to play Call of Duty or what ever the hell they play these days.

A story line ? Boy meets Girl ? A Love story ? Nah.
 

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