Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: claris!netcom!edg@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Edward Greenberg) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Design For Humans Message-ID: Date: 29 Sep 89 22:40:13 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Edward Greenberg Organization: NetCom- The Bay Area's Public Access Unix System {408 997-9175} Lines: 61 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 420, message 1 of 11 >[Moderator's Note: But you know what I *really* miss are the 2515 >sets. Those were the 2500 'two line turn button' sets, with the plastic >knob in the corner for selection of line one or two. The turn button also Indeed. Two line twists were a joy, and some even had a manual hold built into the exclusion plunger. One of my favorite phones is a 2500 set with a headset jack in the back. What I wouldn't give for a few more of those. In the interests of reminiscence, here are some of the funky phones I've got in stock: A clear base and handset 2500 set. A friend bought a bunch of these cases and uses them to R & R 2500 sets as novelty items. Everything is clear. The handset, base, faceplate and, of course, the cover over the number card. One of these days I'm going to laser print my phone number onto a transparency so that can be clear too. A marblized green and white Stromberg Carlson trimline. This one was picked up in a phone wholesaler on closeout. The story was that a line of these had been designed for a Hawaiian hotel that got into financial trouble during construction. It went well with a green bathroom that I no longer have. My wife won't let it see the light of day any more though. A beige, five line touchtone card dialer. I gotta find a place to put this one in the house... It's just too nice to keep in a box. Unfortunately, there ain't anyplace in the current residence that needs a phone. This one is programmed by punching out holes in cards. You have to punch two holes per number. One for the row and one for the column. Inside, it's mechanical and electrical madness. I wonder if (where) I could still get cards. An "ITT/Kellogg" 576 set. This is one with three lines and three manual holds. It has ROUND buttons, and has to have hookswitch key restoration on the hold buttons, in order not to busy out the lines forever. It also has neon ring indicators on the line buttons, and provisions to wire a supply to provide lights for on-hold indications. This phone has a Numeric dial, rather than a "metropolitan" one. That means it has ten LARGE digits (in standard rotary dial digit font) instead of ten smaller digits with letter codes next to them. What other pieces of history do we have out there? Ed Greenberg uunet!apple!netcom!edg [Moderator's Note: I've got a 'French-style' phone: the round, fat base with the felt covering the bottom, the sort of skinny neck and the four fingers -- two extended upright on either side - which form the cradle. It has a rather large, heavy receiver, and *straight, brown cloth cord* from the receiver to the base, and from the base to where it was tied on by its spade lugs to the side-ringer on the wall. Rotary dial, of course, with a 'Z' on the Operator hole. Inside the unit on the bottom plate is the notation 'manufactured by Western Electric Hawthorne Works, 3-15-1927'. Bell phones of that era did not have bells in them. The bell was always in a box mounted on the wall; what we would today term a side-ringer, as is used for the second line on a two line phone. It still works, but the transmission quality is poor. PT]