Get 'em while they're cheap. New Yorkers have rediscovered them.
No wonder all the orange ones are commanding inflated prices.
No wonder all the orange ones are commanding inflated prices.
The Return of the Rotary Telephone
- Thread starter rp2813
- Start date
Help Support :
I've got my little stockpile, just waiting for the prices to really
skyrocket LOL
skyrocket LOL
bluejay
Well-known member
The prices have been rising steadily in the last few years; I used to go thrifting and find a lot. Now I rarely find them and the prices on eBay and Etsy are WAY too high.
You can still find a basic black Western Electric model 500 (my favorite) going cheap on ebay sometimes. Right now there's one listed for $5. Shipping is what kills most deals.
Even those that look to be in sad shape will usually clean up fairly well, and 99.9% of the time, they work. The other 0.1% of the time, they can be made to work with very little effort -- a screwdriver if that.
Flea markets and swap meets are the best places to find them. I've heard a number of stories (no pun intended) about rare phones being found at such places cheap, one even in the garbage at the end of the day because it hadn't sold.
WECo made millions upon millions of model 500 sets, and as we all know, they are nearly indestructible. Trends may drive their price up, but it will be a long, long time before they become a scarce commodity.
I have a small collection of old phones, but I've come to like my 500s the best. They are substantial, they have the most comfortable handset, their gongs provide a pleasant ring, and it has been stated that the WECo 500 may be considered the most important, influential and iconic industrial design piece produced in the entire 20th century. I agree, and apparently the hipsters are catching on.
Even those that look to be in sad shape will usually clean up fairly well, and 99.9% of the time, they work. The other 0.1% of the time, they can be made to work with very little effort -- a screwdriver if that.
Flea markets and swap meets are the best places to find them. I've heard a number of stories (no pun intended) about rare phones being found at such places cheap, one even in the garbage at the end of the day because it hadn't sold.
WECo made millions upon millions of model 500 sets, and as we all know, they are nearly indestructible. Trends may drive their price up, but it will be a long, long time before they become a scarce commodity.
I have a small collection of old phones, but I've come to like my 500s the best. They are substantial, they have the most comfortable handset, their gongs provide a pleasant ring, and it has been stated that the WECo 500 may be considered the most important, influential and iconic industrial design piece produced in the entire 20th century. I agree, and apparently the hipsters are catching on.
The props department of a theater I play at has rotary phones of varying vintages. Younger cast members are always fascinated with them. One teen kept putting his finger into the dial holes, simply pressing instead of actually dialing. His face lit up and he said "Wow, that's sick!" when I demonstrated proper technique.
firedome
Well-known member
Been using nothing but WE phones
in the house forever, never moved on from them in the first place... Red and Beige wall sets for the kitchen, Red Trimline in the MBR, Yellow and Beige Princesses in guest rooms. Always hated talking on cell and mobile phones... they'll have to pry the WE handset from my cold dead fingers.
in the house forever, never moved on from them in the first place... Red and Beige wall sets for the kitchen, Red Trimline in the MBR, Yellow and Beige Princesses in guest rooms. Always hated talking on cell and mobile phones... they'll have to pry the WE handset from my cold dead fingers.
Those old phones probably had far higher quality speakers and microphones than a lot of the junk on sale today for use with analog PSTN landline service.
The speaker and mic capsules in the handsets were really excellent in all of the various phones of that era and they were designed to last for decades and be repaired by swapping out components.
I think the problem nowadays is that unless you're buying a very high end office phone (most of which are VoIP anyway these days) you're not going to be able to buy a high-quality PSTN phone anymore.
Also all the expensive ones (at least here in Ireland anyway) are DECT cordless and have been for quite a long time now. It's increasingly difficult to even find a corded phone in a store.
We actually had the Northern Telecom (Nortel) version of the Western Electric 500 phones here in Ireland for years and also the wall-mounted version of the same. Nortel had some kind of a deal with P&T the old telephone monopolist here form the 1920s to early 1980s and localised (and locally manufactured) versions of their main ranges were sold/rented to customers.
There were other manufactures too like the STC (Standard Telephones and Cables) and General Electric Company (nothing to do with US GE) in the UK, Socotel in France and some Ericsson and some other Danish models which arrived later in the push-button era.
The era of the good quality classic landline corded telephone really came to a close in the first half of the 1990s when DECT hit the market in a big way.
I have a really solid sounding, pleasant to use Panasonic VoIP phone on my desk in the home office though - corded and it's every bit as good / better than the old corded phones. The problem is if you pay €15.99 for a phone, it's going to be a pile of junk.
This thing cost almost €200 and it's absolutely top notch in terms of materials, functionality and sound quality.
Those old 500-style dial phones were pricy piece of kit and were generally rented over decades so you really were getting what you paid for.
That's a 1960s Irish-built Northern Electric (Nortel) 500-style dial phone (note the lack of letters on the dial as they weren't generally used here)
Otherwise, pretty much identical to a North American 500-series phone.
The speaker and mic capsules in the handsets were really excellent in all of the various phones of that era and they were designed to last for decades and be repaired by swapping out components.
I think the problem nowadays is that unless you're buying a very high end office phone (most of which are VoIP anyway these days) you're not going to be able to buy a high-quality PSTN phone anymore.
Also all the expensive ones (at least here in Ireland anyway) are DECT cordless and have been for quite a long time now. It's increasingly difficult to even find a corded phone in a store.
We actually had the Northern Telecom (Nortel) version of the Western Electric 500 phones here in Ireland for years and also the wall-mounted version of the same. Nortel had some kind of a deal with P&T the old telephone monopolist here form the 1920s to early 1980s and localised (and locally manufactured) versions of their main ranges were sold/rented to customers.
There were other manufactures too like the STC (Standard Telephones and Cables) and General Electric Company (nothing to do with US GE) in the UK, Socotel in France and some Ericsson and some other Danish models which arrived later in the push-button era.
The era of the good quality classic landline corded telephone really came to a close in the first half of the 1990s when DECT hit the market in a big way.
I have a really solid sounding, pleasant to use Panasonic VoIP phone on my desk in the home office though - corded and it's every bit as good / better than the old corded phones. The problem is if you pay €15.99 for a phone, it's going to be a pile of junk.
This thing cost almost €200 and it's absolutely top notch in terms of materials, functionality and sound quality.
Those old 500-style dial phones were pricy piece of kit and were generally rented over decades so you really were getting what you paid for.
That's a 1960s Irish-built Northern Electric (Nortel) 500-style dial phone (note the lack of letters on the dial as they weren't generally used here)
Otherwise, pretty much identical to a North American 500-series phone.
Here's a 1980s Irish phone 
This one was kind of weird, also made by Nortel in Ireland in the shape of an Irish map. Early/mid 1980s tacky but kinda cool.
Also a photo of an Irish phone booth - they're almost entirely non-existent outside of retro collections of quirky street furniture in pubs and the odd museum at this stage but they were a major iconic part of the street furniture here for years.
They always wrote Telephone in Gaelic on them "Telefón" for the sake of making them look a bit more Irish
The later ones are just boring looking corporate branded glass boxes with Eircom's logo on them and are rapidly disappearing too. Eircom are rather keen to get rid of the last remaining few as they make no money out of them.
Also put in how the logos evolved over the decades ... The old ones were kind of cool in a way compared to the modern "Swoosh-ball" that they went for in the 2000s, although I really like the trademarked font they use.
eircom's still the dominant player for landline telephone services but it hasn't been a monopoly for a long time now.
Thankfully their rates have dropped since then!
"Call the US for 'less than £1 a minute" in 1991 ...
(I ran it through an inflation calculator and that's €2.11 / min or nearly US$2.76!)
I get inclusive calls to the US/Canada and all of Europe these days lol
Very retro ad featuring one of their very classy looking 1980s phones. We still have one and it works perfectly >30 years old.
Their xmas advertising is very old-school nostalgia though (late 80s/early 90s)
This one was kind of weird, also made by Nortel in Ireland in the shape of an Irish map. Early/mid 1980s tacky but kinda cool.
Also a photo of an Irish phone booth - they're almost entirely non-existent outside of retro collections of quirky street furniture in pubs and the odd museum at this stage but they were a major iconic part of the street furniture here for years.
They always wrote Telephone in Gaelic on them "Telefón" for the sake of making them look a bit more Irish
The later ones are just boring looking corporate branded glass boxes with Eircom's logo on them and are rapidly disappearing too. Eircom are rather keen to get rid of the last remaining few as they make no money out of them.
Also put in how the logos evolved over the decades
... The old ones were kind of cool in a way compared to the modern "Swoosh-ball" that they went for in the 2000s, although I really like the trademarked font they use.eircom's still the dominant player for landline telephone services but it hasn't been a monopoly for a long time now.
Thankfully their rates have dropped since then!
"Call the US for 'less than £1 a minute" in 1991 ...
(I ran it through an inflation calculator and that's €2.11 / min or nearly US$2.76!)
I get inclusive calls to the US/Canada and all of Europe these days lol
Very retro ad featuring one of their very classy looking 1980s phones. We still have one and it works perfectly >30 years old.
Their xmas advertising is very old-school nostalgia though (late 80s/early 90s)
James-- You are so right: Sound quality was higher on landlines, and especially older phones. I've lived most of my life in 100+ decibel sound levels, so at 55 years of age high frequencies are harder to hear. This makes cell phones, with their poor high frequency response, a nightmare unless I'm in a fairly quiet room.
The Best Line In the NYT Article:
"Mobile phones aren't made for talking or hearing."
I have two 500s, one 5302, one 302, and one 202 deployed around my house. The telco doesn't provide enough voltage to make them all ring along with the WECo chime box I have connected, so only the 500s are set to ring. The only touchpad phone I use is the cordless one that's part of our answering machine.''
I have the rest of my vintage phones stashed in a cabinet in the garage and a box in the attic.
"Mobile phones aren't made for talking or hearing."
I have two 500s, one 5302, one 302, and one 202 deployed around my house. The telco doesn't provide enough voltage to make them all ring along with the WECo chime box I have connected, so only the 500s are set to ring. The only touchpad phone I use is the cordless one that's part of our answering machine.''
I have the rest of my vintage phones stashed in a cabinet in the garage and a box in the attic.
gusherb
Well-known member
I started collecting them ten years ago, and for the next three years I would go on eBay buying binges. The prices were dirt cheap relative to now. My most valuable phone is a NIB Beige 701B Princess phone from 1960. I won it for a whopping 60 dollars in 2005 and now it would probably go for several hundred.
Last time I counted I had 70+ phones in my collection.
One sad thing is at&t stopped maintaining everything but the last mile infrastructure around here and our POTS line fell into disrepair causing me to have to switch to cable VoIP and the modem they provided doesn't support pulse dialing! I then ordered a Dialgizmo pulse to tone converter that puts a buzz on the line when I hook it into the house wiring... So all but one rotary phone is useless for dialing out at any given time.
I still keep a few 500's sprinkled across the house but they have to be accompanied by TT phones too in order to dial out. I also have some Trimlines, and a 2500 in service too.
Last time I counted I had 70+ phones in my collection.
One sad thing is at&t stopped maintaining everything but the last mile infrastructure around here and our POTS line fell into disrepair causing me to have to switch to cable VoIP and the modem they provided doesn't support pulse dialing! I then ordered a Dialgizmo pulse to tone converter that puts a buzz on the line when I hook it into the house wiring... So all but one rotary phone is useless for dialing out at any given time.
I still keep a few 500's sprinkled across the house but they have to be accompanied by TT phones too in order to dial out. I also have some Trimlines, and a 2500 in service too.
@frigilux
I'm not old enough to remember the pre-digital days, but I spent a good chunk of my life working in sound engineering / production and I know a lot about the way audio's processed.
I've heard that the audio quality on the old crossbar, relay and step-by-step switches where a call was just routed locally or on very clear lines was absolutely superb because there was no compression. You were actually getting a physical path through the switching system and the connections between the switches were generally either not compressed at all just running on copper circuits in multicore cables or were very basically compressed using frequency division.
The signals were definitely processed in the analogue domain and 'companded' by the circuitry in the switches but they weren't ever sampled or digitally compressed. So, you'd have had a very 'warm' sound, I guess.
TDM (time division multiplexing) arrived in the 1960s and then the switching systems became digital using TDM techniques in the 1970s and 80s mostly in this part of the world and some may even have survived into the 1990s.
All modern era PSTN lines are processed through a companding system known as the µ-law algorithm used in the US, Canada and Japan or a-law in Europe. They're similar but developed in parallel in isolation from each other. Effectively this squeezes your voice into a particular bandwidth (this also happened in the analogue era, but probably not as tightly done)
Then your voice is sampled by the line card in the switch and it's quantised (i.e. converted into a number of discrete values) losing a lot of the finer detail.
The PSTN network basically runs on 8-bit PCM audio streaming at 64kbit/s (you may have heard of a T1 line this comprises of 24 of these, its European counterpart is the E1 carrier line which has 32 channels.
It's sampled at 8kHz
All of that sounds quite "OK" as in normal phone line quality.
When you move into mobile networks things get a lot more bandwidth sensitive and the audio quality definitely drops, particularly on older 2G CODECs that are still possibly in use in some areas of networks.
GSM began with "Half-rate" 6.5 kbit/s, and 13 kbit/s which is used for either "full-rate" with an older CODEC or Enhanced Full Rate (which gives much more landline like quality).
They've both been replaced by "AMR" in more modern networks since the UMTS / 3G systems arrived and are also used in 2G GSM too.
"Adaptive MultiRate audio codec which is a lot more sophisticated.
It literally switches sampling rates and compression depending on the available bandwidth on the link to the network.
Sampling frequency 8 kHz/13-bit (160 samples for 20 ms frames), filtered to 200–3400 Hz.
The AMR codec uses eight source codecs with bit-rates of 12.2, 10.2, 7.95, 7.40, 6.70, 5.90, 5.15 and 4.75 kbit/s
It also has a load of other fancy features that even inject a little 'white noise' into the connection to make it sound more comfortable during silences.
There is no voice system for LTE 4G at present, when you make a call / receive a call your phone actually drops back to 3G for the audio transmission.
I'm also not entirely sure what CODECs are used on CDMA networks like Verizon and Sprint, but I would suspect it's something similar and probably quite rate-adaptive too.
Most of the technology behind the stuff I'm describing above was developed by Ericsson, Nokia and NTT in Japan for UMTS (3G) and still forms the basis of most of those voice networks.
When it comes to mobiles though, poor reception, overloaded cells or your carrier just being mean with bandwidth can result in your calls sounding rather heavily compressed. So, it's quite hard to compare like with like as there are so many more variables.
But, it's probably why your voice calls on your mobile don't sound as nice as on your landline which has constant data rates and dedicated, reserved bandwidth for each call.
I'm not old enough to remember the pre-digital days, but I spent a good chunk of my life working in sound engineering / production and I know a lot about the way audio's processed.
I've heard that the audio quality on the old crossbar, relay and step-by-step switches where a call was just routed locally or on very clear lines was absolutely superb because there was no compression. You were actually getting a physical path through the switching system and the connections between the switches were generally either not compressed at all just running on copper circuits in multicore cables or were very basically compressed using frequency division.
The signals were definitely processed in the analogue domain and 'companded' by the circuitry in the switches but they weren't ever sampled or digitally compressed. So, you'd have had a very 'warm' sound, I guess.
TDM (time division multiplexing) arrived in the 1960s and then the switching systems became digital using TDM techniques in the 1970s and 80s mostly in this part of the world and some may even have survived into the 1990s.
All modern era PSTN lines are processed through a companding system known as the µ-law algorithm used in the US, Canada and Japan or a-law in Europe. They're similar but developed in parallel in isolation from each other. Effectively this squeezes your voice into a particular bandwidth (this also happened in the analogue era, but probably not as tightly done)
Then your voice is sampled by the line card in the switch and it's quantised (i.e. converted into a number of discrete values) losing a lot of the finer detail.
The PSTN network basically runs on 8-bit PCM audio streaming at 64kbit/s (you may have heard of a T1 line this comprises of 24 of these, its European counterpart is the E1 carrier line which has 32 channels.
It's sampled at 8kHz
All of that sounds quite "OK" as in normal phone line quality.
When you move into mobile networks things get a lot more bandwidth sensitive and the audio quality definitely drops, particularly on older 2G CODECs that are still possibly in use in some areas of networks.
GSM began with "Half-rate" 6.5 kbit/s, and 13 kbit/s which is used for either "full-rate" with an older CODEC or Enhanced Full Rate (which gives much more landline like quality).
They've both been replaced by "AMR" in more modern networks since the UMTS / 3G systems arrived and are also used in 2G GSM too.
"Adaptive MultiRate audio codec which is a lot more sophisticated.
It literally switches sampling rates and compression depending on the available bandwidth on the link to the network.
Sampling frequency 8 kHz/13-bit (160 samples for 20 ms frames), filtered to 200–3400 Hz.
The AMR codec uses eight source codecs with bit-rates of 12.2, 10.2, 7.95, 7.40, 6.70, 5.90, 5.15 and 4.75 kbit/s
It also has a load of other fancy features that even inject a little 'white noise' into the connection to make it sound more comfortable during silences.
There is no voice system for LTE 4G at present, when you make a call / receive a call your phone actually drops back to 3G for the audio transmission.
I'm also not entirely sure what CODECs are used on CDMA networks like Verizon and Sprint, but I would suspect it's something similar and probably quite rate-adaptive too.
Most of the technology behind the stuff I'm describing above was developed by Ericsson, Nokia and NTT in Japan for UMTS (3G) and still forms the basis of most of those voice networks.
When it comes to mobiles though, poor reception, overloaded cells or your carrier just being mean with bandwidth can result in your calls sounding rather heavily compressed. So, it's quite hard to compare like with like as there are so many more variables.
But, it's probably why your voice calls on your mobile don't sound as nice as on your landline which has constant data rates and dedicated, reserved bandwidth for each call.
The Ericsson Dialog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_Dialog
One other type of rotary dial phone that was quite common here in the 1960s-70s and into the 1980s.
I preferred the look of those to the 500 series, they're somewhat more refined.
Ericsson are absolutely huge in European telecommunications tech. They're also one of the key suppliers of network equipment like switches and have been since the early 20th century.
Ericsson's crossbar systems ran a huge chunk of European voice traffic all through the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s with systems like ARF, ARM, ARK and then later ARE (electronic).
Ericsson AXE is still hugely dominant in the digital era and you'll find those switches in mobile networks all over the world, including the US. It's pretty much the largest European counterpart to the Western Electric 4ESS and 5ESS or Northern Telecom DMS and dates back to the mid 70s.
There's a major Ericsson ARF switch in Rotterdam being switched over to digital AXE quite some decades ago by the looks of the film. Kinda sad in a way to see a vast old analog 'computer' system just end up in a dumpster like that when its life expired.
en.wikipedia.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ericsson_Dialog
One other type of rotary dial phone that was quite common here in the 1960s-70s and into the 1980s.
I preferred the look of those to the 500 series, they're somewhat more refined.
Ericsson are absolutely huge in European telecommunications tech. They're also one of the key suppliers of network equipment like switches and have been since the early 20th century.
Ericsson's crossbar systems ran a huge chunk of European voice traffic all through the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s with systems like ARF, ARM, ARK and then later ARE (electronic).
Ericsson AXE is still hugely dominant in the digital era and you'll find those switches in mobile networks all over the world, including the US. It's pretty much the largest European counterpart to the Western Electric 4ESS and 5ESS or Northern Telecom DMS and dates back to the mid 70s.
There's a major Ericsson ARF switch in Rotterdam being switched over to digital AXE quite some decades ago by the looks of the film. Kinda sad in a way to see a vast old analog 'computer' system just end up in a dumpster like that when its life expired.
Ericsson Dialog - Wikipedia
philr
Well-known member
My grandfather was working for Northern Electric and when I was a kid, he explained me how they simplified the dialing mechanism in the NE 500 (a copy of the Western Electric) over the years... The number of moving parts was apparently greatly reduced from the early to the late models but I don't remember exactly what he told me! I know I had a black one from 1973 when I was a kid and that the dial jammed so I got his 1968 NE-500 that I still have today. I was also fascinated by my parent's NE Contempra phone (which they were renting to the phone company) and bought quite a few since! It's funny they had rotary dial phones but they were paying extra to have a Touch-Tone line for years before they began renting Touch-Tone phones! In the small city I come from, the regular phone lines had numbers beginning by "753" and "756" and the Touch-Tone lines began with "759", you could tell the difference by the way the phone was ringing on the line when calling someone else.
Even the "line busy" sound was different. I remember my grandparents having done the opposite as my parents did when they switched from a rotary phone to a Touch Tone phone but they still had the "pulse" line. My grandmother complained about the delay it took before the phone would ring and she told me the phone it was much quicker with the rotary phone! I told her it wasn't the same at my parent's place but I didn't know why back then!
I remember when reconditioned Contempra phones were sold at $2 in the early nineties at People's or Woolworth (I can't remember which but I bought my first one there!).
When I was a kid, I was often faking dialing on the motif of the floor covering in my parents kitchen. Here, my parents let me use their Contempra phone for real when I was 1 year old in January of 1978!
Even the "line busy" sound was different. I remember my grandparents having done the opposite as my parents did when they switched from a rotary phone to a Touch Tone phone but they still had the "pulse" line. My grandmother complained about the delay it took before the phone would ring and she told me the phone it was much quicker with the rotary phone! I told her it wasn't the same at my parent's place but I didn't know why back then!
I remember when reconditioned Contempra phones were sold at $2 in the early nineties at People's or Woolworth (I can't remember which but I bought my first one there!).
When I was a kid, I was often faking dialing on the motif of the floor covering in my parents kitchen. Here, my parents let me use their Contempra phone for real when I was 1 year old in January of 1978!
I'd say you had different exchanges/switches serving different number ranges.
Typically they upgraded from crossbar to digital bit by bit rather than in a big dramatic cutover.
Here in Ireland some exchanges would have been dramatically cutover from step-by-step to either Alcatel E10 or Ericsson AXE (the two digital switching systems used here) in the 1980s. However, some of the more 'high tech' crossbar local switches remained in service as they were probably only installed in the early 1970s or late 60s.
They were all a system called Ericsson ARF. They had a solution where by you would install a digital switch in the same building, then the higher functions of the crossbar switch would be taken over by that new system. So, customers were still connected to an electromechanical switch for their dial tone and local switching went through the crossbar switch matrix in the old switch, however anything beyond that and all of the billing and intelligence was in the digital AXE 'parent'.
Bit by bit, the AXE would take over number ranges completely and eventually the entire system would be cut over to digital, but it didn't happen instantly so you would have had some ranges of numbers with more basic services.
Most of the 1970s crossbars here supported tone dialling though. You just wouldn't have had services like call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail etc. and if you ordered ISDN you'd have to move numbers to the digital switch's ranges.
So, I guess something similar was going on in your area, possibly with different equipment vendors, but still the same piece-meal switch over process.
I've seen that Nortel rotary dial phone here in Ireland too btw!
Typically they upgraded from crossbar to digital bit by bit rather than in a big dramatic cutover.
Here in Ireland some exchanges would have been dramatically cutover from step-by-step to either Alcatel E10 or Ericsson AXE (the two digital switching systems used here) in the 1980s. However, some of the more 'high tech' crossbar local switches remained in service as they were probably only installed in the early 1970s or late 60s.
They were all a system called Ericsson ARF. They had a solution where by you would install a digital switch in the same building, then the higher functions of the crossbar switch would be taken over by that new system. So, customers were still connected to an electromechanical switch for their dial tone and local switching went through the crossbar switch matrix in the old switch, however anything beyond that and all of the billing and intelligence was in the digital AXE 'parent'.
Bit by bit, the AXE would take over number ranges completely and eventually the entire system would be cut over to digital, but it didn't happen instantly so you would have had some ranges of numbers with more basic services.
Most of the 1970s crossbars here supported tone dialling though. You just wouldn't have had services like call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail etc. and if you ordered ISDN you'd have to move numbers to the digital switch's ranges.
So, I guess something similar was going on in your area, possibly with different equipment vendors, but still the same piece-meal switch over process.
I've seen that Nortel rotary dial phone here in Ireland too btw!
We had crossbar and electronic switches within the same offices here. Subscribers served from an exchange that had both types of switches would have to change their number if they were on a crossbar and wanted features like Call Waiting.
The last crossbar switch in this area, and possibly the entire LEC's intra-state territory, was cutover to digital in the early 1990's.
I still prefer the flat spine of the 500 handset for hands-free cradling. Handsets with rounded spines are a lot less cooperative.
The last crossbar switch in this area, and possibly the entire LEC's intra-state territory, was cutover to digital in the early 1990's.
I still prefer the flat spine of the 500 handset for hands-free cradling. Handsets with rounded spines are a lot less cooperative.
philr
Well-known member
The first Touch-Tone lines here didn't support services like call waiting, caller ID display or call forwarding. My parents were among the first in town to get these services in 1988 or 1989 and they had to get a new phone number that was beginning by "752". Soon after, these services became available for those who had the "759" and "755" Touch-Tone numbers and even to those who had the "753" and "756" numbers and the "ringing" and "line busy" sounded all the same!
About the Contempra phone I think it's one of the rare designs that Northern Electric didn't copy from Western Electric. Later ones were available in both rotary dial and Touch-Tone (I have a few of both) but the newer ones were usually made in less interesting colors. I have even seen some selling on eBay US that had leather covering. I don't recall seeing one like that in Canada but I think that even those sold in the US were made here in Canada (I could be wrong about that).
About the Contempra phone I think it's one of the rare designs that Northern Electric didn't copy from Western Electric. Later ones were available in both rotary dial and Touch-Tone (I have a few of both) but the newer ones were usually made in less interesting colors. I have even seen some selling on eBay US that had leather covering. I don't recall seeing one like that in Canada but I think that even those sold in the US were made here in Canada (I could be wrong about that).
Touch tone (DTMF) was available on some non-digital switches.
I know we definitely had Ericsson ARE11 which were a kind of computerised crossbar that absolutely definitely supported touchtone dialling.
Some places also had intermediate technologies that used reed relay matrixes to connect calls. These were analog electronic switches often with computer controls. Most of those would have supported touch tone and even had call waiting, call forwarding, alarm/reminder calls, voicemail and all of that too.
From an end users' perspective the only difference you might have noticed was a slower call setup time than digital.
There were a few 'dead end' switch technologies emerged in the 60s/ 70s that used non-digital switching with computer controls. In Europe systems like Philips PRX, Ericsson AKE and the British TXE systems were all effectively technological mistakes as they didn't foresee what was coming with digital processing which had already been invented and implemented before they were manufactured.
I know the first digital local exchanges went into service here in Ireland in 1979 on a trial basis and then Ericsson AXE and Alcatel E10 systems were rolled out quite rapidly starting from late 1980 onwards.
Alcatel's E10 was actually the first digital switch put into local service anywhere the world. It was connecting French customers in 1971, Ericsson AXE arrived in 1976, Nortel DMS in 1979, the UK Marconi System X connected its first local call in 1981 and Western Electric / Bell 5ESS arrived in 1982 (the trunk version launched in 1986 the 4ESS but that didn't connect local customers, only inter-office stuff)
The big change now is that the core networks are all moving to VoIP in these voice systems.
I'm not sure how it's being done in the US but here what's happening is basically this:
Current structure:
Ireland's got a population of approximately 4.6 million and the PSTN network isn't the only show in town by a long shot - same as most places : cable and VoIP are taking a lot of landline traffic off the traditional PSTN.
However here's how it looks:
Tertiary: Provides various intelligent network services for number portability, international connectivity etc etc.
Secondary: 46 MSUs (Main Switching Units) - large central offices (some connect end users, some don't) - Some Intelligent network stuff happens here too and also handover of calls to other operators.
Primary/Edge of Network: more than 1200 RSUs (Remote Subscriber Units) - these are basically remotely located parts of the parent central office/exchange and connect local users. They range in size from <100 lines to >50,000 lines.
What's happening at the moment is the tertiary services have been already moved to IP based equipment and most of the MSUs are also now IP-based.
However, your local, customer-facing switching system that provides you with the dial tone is still quite likely TDM-based technology even if it's talking to the outside world via modern IP networks.
It's going to take a while before those systems are finally killed off I think.
We use the same ring back tone as the UK (and New Zealand and a few other places)
That's what you'll hear if you ring an Irish or British number... post 1970s digital switch ring tone.
I know we definitely had Ericsson ARE11 which were a kind of computerised crossbar that absolutely definitely supported touchtone dialling.
Some places also had intermediate technologies that used reed relay matrixes to connect calls. These were analog electronic switches often with computer controls. Most of those would have supported touch tone and even had call waiting, call forwarding, alarm/reminder calls, voicemail and all of that too.
From an end users' perspective the only difference you might have noticed was a slower call setup time than digital.
There were a few 'dead end' switch technologies emerged in the 60s/ 70s that used non-digital switching with computer controls. In Europe systems like Philips PRX, Ericsson AKE and the British TXE systems were all effectively technological mistakes as they didn't foresee what was coming with digital processing which had already been invented and implemented before they were manufactured.
I know the first digital local exchanges went into service here in Ireland in 1979 on a trial basis and then Ericsson AXE and Alcatel E10 systems were rolled out quite rapidly starting from late 1980 onwards.
Alcatel's E10 was actually the first digital switch put into local service anywhere the world. It was connecting French customers in 1971, Ericsson AXE arrived in 1976, Nortel DMS in 1979, the UK Marconi System X connected its first local call in 1981 and Western Electric / Bell 5ESS arrived in 1982 (the trunk version launched in 1986 the 4ESS but that didn't connect local customers, only inter-office stuff)
The big change now is that the core networks are all moving to VoIP in these voice systems.
I'm not sure how it's being done in the US but here what's happening is basically this:
Current structure:
Ireland's got a population of approximately 4.6 million and the PSTN network isn't the only show in town by a long shot - same as most places : cable and VoIP are taking a lot of landline traffic off the traditional PSTN.
However here's how it looks:
Tertiary: Provides various intelligent network services for number portability, international connectivity etc etc.
Secondary: 46 MSUs (Main Switching Units) - large central offices (some connect end users, some don't) - Some Intelligent network stuff happens here too and also handover of calls to other operators.
Primary/Edge of Network: more than 1200 RSUs (Remote Subscriber Units) - these are basically remotely located parts of the parent central office/exchange and connect local users. They range in size from <100 lines to >50,000 lines.
What's happening at the moment is the tertiary services have been already moved to IP based equipment and most of the MSUs are also now IP-based.
However, your local, customer-facing switching system that provides you with the dial tone is still quite likely TDM-based technology even if it's talking to the outside world via modern IP networks.
It's going to take a while before those systems are finally killed off I think.
We use the same ring back tone as the UK (and New Zealand and a few other places)
That's what you'll hear if you ring an Irish or British number... post 1970s digital switch ring tone.
Off the top of my head...
I have quite a few. One NT TT Contempra, one NT rotary Contempra, 3 WE 500 sets, 2 WE 2500 sets, one WE 554 set, 1 WE rotary Trimline, 1 German De Te We 152 and a modern Sagemcom Sixty.
I have quite a few. One NT TT Contempra, one NT rotary Contempra, 3 WE 500 sets, 2 WE 2500 sets, one WE 554 set, 1 WE rotary Trimline, 1 German De Te We 152 and a modern Sagemcom Sixty.
