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A bit nostalgia in this one for me. Although this was before my 35 years in telecommunications my father actually did work on these older units. Although I started out in the era of battery & ground driven products I ended in the nowadays VoIP (voice over internet provider) world.
These hand cranked generator units were from around the 1900-1940 time frame. In comparison to an iPhone in ounces this exact unit weighed in at 19.9 lbs.
Ah this is fun. My mom has one on her wall and her sister had one, too. They were from the farm when they were kids and would work if the ancient system was still in place. I love the little shelf for writing messages, but wouldn’t trade what we have now even for this workhorse. You could desaturate a bit and lift the blacks if you felt like it. I wouldn’t go too antique looking in terms of processing, but I think a little toward that way would fit.
@_Kris
Hi Kris, thank you for the review and comments. I did visit a Canadian relative on their farm as a very young person and recall them having one on their wall and it was still in service. That would have been early 50’s.
I can recall our home in Moreno, Ca. as a kid being on a 8 party line. You had to listen for the number & duration of each ring sequence to know if it was for your residence. We were thrilled when we got down to a 4 party service with ringing service specific to each residence. No more listening for the number & sequence of ring cycles.
OMG - My aunt (the sister in my post) had a party line at one point. Yeah, you had to listen for your ring. Can’t remember how many other parties were on it, but oh it was funny when you are 8 years old and just pick up to listen to weird adult talk.
This is really cool, Paul!
Yeah, Definitely “Pre - iPhone!” and it brings back a lot of memories for me as well.
My grandmother had one of these on her kitchen wall. The really cool part was that sometime in the late sixties my brother converted it to work with modern telephone systems of that era (he replaced the inner workings), the dial was located under the tilted shelf (I helped by adding a piano hinge to the shelf), even the original bells at the top worked with the new setup.
My grandmother used that phone for many years after that, although, it took some time for her to realize that she didn’t need to use the crank on the side to make a call but she was in her late eighties at that time, she passed away about 10 years later.
And I vividly remember the party line fiasco, we had a 2 party line, the “Other” party was a family of eight with 4 girls and 4 boys, we rarely ever got to use our own phone until they finally give us a dedicated line, what a relief that was!!
It’s a fine image of a very innovative piece of history! At the time it was truly revolutionary!
@Merv what wonderful stories and recall you had from your earlier years. The updated conversion your brother made was possible by changing out the network guts if you will from a 500 rotary dial desk set or the similar network from a 554 dial wall phone.
The story of the party line issue had me ROFLMAO. It sounds like your 2 party line with the neighbor multi members was as bad as our 8 party line system. We were thrilled to go to a 4 party line system with distinctive ringing on the given phone instead of ALL the phones on the line receiving a sequence of rings to decide if the call was for your given residence. With everyone world wide carrying cell phones now how did we ever survive those days?..
Yeah, as I recall, it was the 500 desk set. My oldest brother was a machinist so he took care of mechanical parts needed, my second to oldest brother was a electronics engineer and I was the cabinet maker of the family so it was a family project. Lol
Our grandmother didn’t like the desk rotary phone near as much as the old generator phone depicted here so we helped her out.
We had a specific ring sequence on our party line but the calls were so rare we never had the chance to memorize it.
My mom had a great sense of humor, the phone rang one time and she blurted out: “What was that?”
Good times!
Most of the people we talked to were relatives that were also close neighbors so we could always just walk to their house and have face to face conversations, it was far easier than using the phone until we got our own line.
That’s a well preserved phone in a very nice setting.
…great days back then, even as tough as life could be at times.