Model A Era Phones

R

rfitzpatrick

Well-known member
I'm looking for information about how to adapt my 1915 phone to daily use -- anyone ever tackle that? I'm finding I need this devise: Cell2Jack. It allows using Bluetooth and your old Land Line.
Thanks
 
The 1915 phone was likely "hello operator give me 278."

Later phones (with a dial) were "pulse connected." Most of these are "back compatible" to include even electronic pulsing.

I expect the Cell2Jack interfaces with this latter. An early phone would have to have some means to "pulse" to activate the Cell2Jack.

Joe K
Who has two oak phones in the early pattern but adapted to pulse with a dial. It would be nice to have the separate earpiece and ring back in the shop.
 
There are people around and sites on the internet that do that kind of stuff.I tried to do something like you want to do,but I had a hard time trying to understand through their technical jargon.I finally did find one of them that pretty much said,hook this to that,power up that other thing,and that'll work.My aunt had a little lunch counter in ther front room,mostly for the sawmill workers next door.In that front room was a switchboard,for that area.She would feed people and plug cords in that thing at the same time.My dad was born in 36,and remembers eating in there while she ran the switchboard.I was born in 56,and remember eating in there,but the switchboard was just an ornament at that time.There was kind of a community phone that sat on her desk after that.We lived about 1000 feet away,through the woods,and I remember getting our own phone in the summer of 1960.
 
what phone do you have?
no dial,hand crank bell box?
rotary dial with separate bell box?
there are converters on amazon but I don’t know if they can drive the ringer ( old ringers have ringer equivalent much higher , new electronic phones are 1/10 or less of old phones
 
KURT --- Western Electric Inter Phone with theses marking:Z RFC and 327AB inside. And a small black button that I assume is a : Push To Talk--Release To Listen.
Thanks
 
I bought this on eBay about 25 years ago from a guy in Boston who restores antique phones.
Automatic Electric. called "jukebox" phone for obvious reason.
Just did a search to determine exact age but best I could find is "pre-1940"
This one is fully functional, when I still had a land line it was connected and boy was the ringer LOUD.
 

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This is the phone type I bought for the shop about 1978. It's actually a "modern" phone with a dial on the front above the shelf. No magneto inside, the circuit board interfaces with the hand receiver, dial and the center front mounted microphone. The bells are fake as is the crank. It's a nice copy though and fits the setting.

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I have since found another one just like it at the dump. Clobbered by the bulldozer, it was missing the hand receiver and one side of the case - but it will probably work once I put it back together.

Basically the only reason I grabbed the dump phone was because it had the "dial." Most period phones of this ilk don't include a dial (i.e. connect me to 286) and with dial could readily be adapted to a modern system like the 1978 phone.

That is USED to able to adapt.

Since the dropping of a land line due to cell-phone one of these is on the wall (static decoration), the other under my work-bench.

Joe K
 
When I worked at ca. 1914 Deerfield No. 2 Hydroelectric Station rebuild in 1979, they were in process of removing the "phone boxes" which were of the two bells/loose handset/microphone on a post ilk. There were two in each station (two levels) and both at No. 2 were very carefully "accounted" for in the removal.

Deerfield No. 2 you pushed the call button "twice" to indicate from whence the call comes. The company operator/receptionist in Greenfield, MA would pick up and ask "How can I connect your call?"

In 1976 I worked as "governor attendant" at Bellows Falls Hydroelectric. Attendant had a desk on the main operating floor - but the phones there were modern plastic, obviously new within the year. My fellow GAs told me they used to have a "candlestick" phone where the plastic phone was sitting.

"You flipped the receiver hook to call the Control Room Operator."

The plastic phone we dialed "17." (Control Room) Dialing "0" would get you an actual Bell System Operator. And "911" was functional, and probably the reason for the change.

Joe K
 
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My great grandfather had an early wall phone that is long since gone but we found the outline of it on the wall when we remodeled the house. It was for the systems before the solenoid rotary switching systems came into use in our rural Kansas area. It had a hand crank magneto that rang the local operator switch board and they would place your call. Lines were interconnected in small districts otherwise known as party lines.

The rotary systems gave way to the touch tone systems many years ago so the phone has to generate tones to work but that system is also outdated for the most part. Most folks went all cellular or they went VOIP with their local internet provider. Voice over internet protocol requires a modem connection but it is easier than using tone generation and AT&T may not even provide any service that way now. The old phone lines were basically abandoned for cable connection here a long time ago. VOIP still requires a microphone and earphone connection plus a tone connection for incoming and outgoing alerts so the connection to the modem is relatively simple much like a military field phone.
 
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The rotary systems gave way to the touch tone systems many years ago so the phone has to generate tones to work but that system is also outdated for the most part.
Click to expand...
The ca. 1978 "Dial" phone I mentioned above has a "switch" on the back. It can do "pulse" or "tone."

I remember at some point since 1978 we were notified of the change-over from pulse and me moving the switch to keep the phone "operable" and noting you would dial the dial, hear the mechanical dial go back to zero, then hear that number in the earpiece as a "tone."

As I say it had a circuit board internally, and I suppose that was an "advanced feature" of that time.

Since about 2005 (switch for us to Cell), the antique looking phone has been "ephemera."

Joe K
 
Well,
Here's the telephone setup that I keep in the car when I have passengers to amuse.


572798



The phone is a Candlestick phone replica from the 1970s bought off of eBay, and it's plugged into a XLink BTTN Bluetooth Gateway. It connects via Bluetooth to my cellphone and I wired it up to a battery pack for power, with all of it stored inside a small travel trunk I got at a discount store (like Marshall's or Ross).


End result:
Passengers have a working Candlestick Dial phone (complete with dialtone) to use.
 

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The radio brings to mind the opening scenes from "The Walton's" where John drives up in the AA Truck and delivers a 1938 Philco Radio - SIMILAR to the tombstone radio repop you have.

Curiosity abounds, turns out the Zenith radio is quite a collector's item at least in part because of the television program but also because it embodied some "advanced" features itself - like "bulls-eye" tuning, and a motorized tune traverse feature. Several Zeniths of that time frame embodied these features.

Pricing for these begins about $300 and goes considerably higher.

https://www.classicradiogallery.com/radiopages/zenithwalton.html

Joe K
 
How big is the cabinet on this phone. Just about, this is not a homework assignment... I have one at my house, and I used it until we moved. I may, or may not, have an idea for you fitzpatrick
 
This is an early Western Electric - more Model T than A - that looks like it was updated as technology changed - still has it’s magneto, and dial, and push button…
 

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Gene F said:
How big is the cabinet on this phone. Just about, this is not a homework assignment... I have one at my house, and I used it until we moved. I may, or may not, have an idea for you fitzpatrick
Click to expand...

Thanks, I found someone out California way to work with, but I don't have his permission to release his contact. I'm working with a RailRoad (Scissors Style)
Phone. It's very heavy, Bluetooth will be required. I can update as it's progress if interested
Thanks for your interest
 
In the 1970’s I had a physics professor who was well into his seventh or eighth decade. He delighted in telling us stories about electric technology from when he was a boy growing up in Pennsylvania. He said there were two competing phone companies in his town, Bell, and Keystone. Their systems did not interconnect. If you had a Keystone phone you could only call other Keystone customers, and Bell people could only call other Bell people. The stores advertised both their Bell and Keystone phone numbers.
He also related how he built a crystal (germanium diode) radio and his grandfather (born around the time Lincoln was president) asked him what he was doing. Listen to this, Grandpa, it’s a man talking in Pittsburgh. He said his grandfather listened to the headset for a few moments, then declared it was all a hoax and he couldn’t be fooled like that.
 
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