Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!netsys!vector!telecom-gateway From: kitty!larry@uunet.uu.net (Larry Lippman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Panel Telephones & Bell System "Turkeys" of the 1960's Message-ID: Date: 7 Oct 89 20:15:37 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 80 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 436, message 1 of 7 In article SKASS@drew.bitnet writes: > And does anyone besides me have fond memories of the Panel Phone > (tm) ? My parents still have the two we had installed about 20 years > ago, and they work fine. They were installed into the wall, requiring > a hole about 8 x 10 inches, and have a non-tangling cord about 4 feet > long which retracts into a hole in the panel. They've never failed, > despite the thousands of times my father said I was pulling too hard > on the cord. They'll never go modular, I'm afraid, and if they do > fail, we'll have to call the plasterer, but they made a lot of sense. > We even have one of those two-line knobs on one of them, though it's > not hooked up to both lines any more. An installer who came by the > house a couple of years ago had never seen them before. Panel telephones were rather neat, and I remember them fondly from the 1960's when they seemed so *futuristic*. :-) Panel telephones were also made as a 5-line keyset, along with an internal speakerphone option (although an external 55-type speakerphone control box was required). I don't believe that panel telephones are still manufactured for single-line residential use, but an equivalent type of instrument for installation in control consoles may still be manufactured by such vendors as Allen-Tel, Northern Telecom and Plantronics. An interesting Bell System offering which came out in the early 1960's (about the same time as the panel telephone) was the 1A Home Interphone System. This system required two-line "turn-key" telephone sets, often of the Princess variety. The system had capabilities for answering one CO line and placing it on hold, in addition to providing local intercommunication between telephone sets within a residence. There were also some handsfree intercom options, which included the ability to answer the front door using an outdoor transmitter/loudspeaker. There was even a feature which integrated the 1A Home Interphone System with a 1A or 1A1 key telephone system for residences with up to three CO lines. The Bell System had grandiose plans during the 1960's for a 1A Home Interphone System in every home, along with a chicken in every pot, but alas, the 1A Home Interphone System was a turkey which was over-priced and simply never sold to within a fraction of expectations. Speaking of chickens and turkeys - believe it or not - there was also the 2A Farm Interphone System. This apparatus was similar to that of the home variety, except that it had higher-power outdoor loudspeakers for intercom purposes, in addition to providing electronic tone ringing over the outdoor loudspeakers. Some of the BSP sections on the 2A Farm Interphone System have really precious drawings of typical installations on a farm, including house, barn, silo, a loudspeaker in a chicken coop, etc., along with a smiling farmer (with overalls and hat) talking to a smiling wife (reminiscent of Mrs. Cleaver) in a bedroom! If you think that the above interphone systems were turkeys because very few were ever sold, there is something even worse, the Edsel of the Bell System, PICTUREPHONE [tm]. Some years ago I heard a rumor from a "well-placed source" at AT&T that the Bell System had lost over $ 300 million on Picturephone; while that may not seem like much money today, picture :-) it in terms of 1960's dollars and it becomes much more significant. <> Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp. - Uniquex Corp. - Viatran Corp. <> UUCP {allegra|boulder|decvax|rutgers|watmath}!sunybcs!kitty!larry <> TEL 716/688-1231 | 716/773-1700 {hplabs|utzoo|uunet}!/ \uniquex!larry <> FAX 716/741-9635 | 716/773-2488 "Have you hugged your cat today?" [Moderator's Note: There were also a few panel *pay* phones around. The post office at 211 South Clark Street in Chicago has two of them in the lobby. Slightly larger than the home models, these are also completely recessed into the wall, with a single slot on the top for the money. These were installed when this post office opened, in 1973. Apartment building front door 'enterphone service' provided by Illinois Bell (a CO-based service) also uses panel phones, but with armored handsets instead of the old kind which retracted back into the wall. And for quite a few years, *the* picturephone center was located in the lobby of the Illinois Bell HQ building, 212 West Washington St. They had a rather nice looking conference room set up, with camera, speakers, etc, and they rented it out by the hour to companies wanting to have picturephone conferences with a branch in some other city. PT]