Vintage phones

[fan-of-fans]

My new interest lately has been vintage telephones. I acquired two Western Electric Trimlines, one a green rotary of 1971, the other an ivory 12 button in ivory color of 1969.

I bet the ivory touchtone was considered cutting edge at the time as I believe 1969 was the first year the sextile * and octothorpe # buttons were added.

Today I received another purchase, my first Princess, a touch tone in green. Unfortunately the seller used only paper for packing and the entire cover smashed to pieces.

I find the old four prong jacks interesting as well as the big handset cord plugs used on the early Trimlines, the predecessor to today's modular jacks.

 

[firedome]

Love the WE made phones,

we have a bunch of Trimlines 2220/2226, and Princess 2702, our favorites, along with several 1500 (rotary) and 1554 (TT) wall phones... absolutely hate cellphones and use them only when in the car/travelling, I hope I'm in the ground when all the landlines are done away with!

 

[justjunque]

Western Electric phones

That's almost all we have in our house.
I love the real bells when they ring, the heavier feel to the handset, etc.
Not to mention, the way they look.
We have a 2554 on the kitchen wall. We can alternate between an ivory one or yellow/gold.
I have a couple of rotary dial 554s that I want to put into rotation there, but they need to have converters installed in them, so we can dial out. Our service doesn't support pulse dialing.
In the bedrooms, we have 500s. They're easier to convert, because the line cord just plugs into the converter.
I also went on a Trimline kick for a while, and bought a few different colors. We don't currently have any of those in use though.
When I moved out of what was previously my grandmother's apartment, I took her old, black model 500 with me.
The entire thing is original, with all the internal parts and base being dated, I believe it's March of 1954.
It would need to be updated to modular, and have some restoration work done to it if I wanted to put it back into service. I'm just torn with regard to updating it in any way, because of its originality.
Plus, I don't do that work myself. I have a guy who is great with old phones, but I'd have to ship it to him.
As you unfortunately learned, and I've experienced as well, bad things can happen to good phones in the hands of shippers.
I'd really hate to be responsible for it getting destroyed in transit after it's survived all this time.
Enjoy your Western Electrics!

Barry

 

[sarahperdue]

Landlines and old phones

We still have a landline in Tuscaloosa, and seven or eight years ago, I had the landline in the country reconnected with my grandparent's original number--I'm not sure what it was in 1938, but the number I have now is the same number at the house since 7 digit dialing. AT&T did a bait and switch on a bundle deal and changed our in town landline to VOIP. We had to fight to get our POTS service back, but we did. Most definitely POTS service in the country. A family friend who designs 991 service centers advised us to hold on to our POTS lines as long as possible because Telcos are trying hard to phase out copper, but there are laws that protect existing POTS subscribers. We have a powder blue trimline in town and a brown trimline in the country, but we have some older phones including a pair of WE jukebox phones and a phone with a generator box that was used between my grandparents' and my great grandparents' houses back in the day.