The Telephone

I wonder if anyone makes a version that would still work with current phone infrastructure? I mean, I saw Fran taking calls on it - but how about one with a dial? I would totally have that on my desk... Oh, you'd need to modify the ringer box.. now I need to go do some googling...

I grew up with a party line. Wow, how times have changed. I retired from the phone company so this video brings back memories for me. Thanks for the video!

Steve Whitacre

That candlestick one is a beauty! I've got an old Western Elec bakelite one set up with a repurposed 4G router to act as a "trunk unit" stuffed inside an old bell box (the bells that work are in the phone though) I want to get one of the Australian issue bakelite GE ones as I have a carbon mic retrofit for those which would make it perfectly usable.

Anton

This comment is very short.

Whippet Gas

What a lovely ring. Slightly higher pitched than the UK version (not to mention our 2 ring / 3 pause cycle), but great to hear again. When I was a kid, we had what was called a party line. We shared our line with one of our neighbours, and sometimes you'd pick the phone up to use it but could hear them in conversation. You had no choice but to hang up and try again later. No such thing as privacy then!

Ymir the Frost Giant

Wow! I never had a candlestick phone as a kid, but sure had dozens of 70s-era 500 series desk phones, Trimlines, Princess and all manner of office phones. I worked for a guy who salvaged antiquities from buildings being torn down in Chicago. This was done with the permission of the demolition company as my boss paid cash for brass doorknobs, ornamental wood, etc. Here's the strange thing, though. Back in 1980, when the Bell System was still intact, for whatever reason, they would abandon telephone equipment in the building and just let it all get mixed with the rest of the rubble. Loving electronics, I'd find out where the switching, or PBX, or whatever room was in the basement and find walls of switchgear and power supplies. I was only like 12 years old and I'd take as many phones, and switching equipment, as I could physically move. This Western Electric stuff was HEAVY. I mean it was as if they intentionally made it so heavy that you could safely hide behind it with someone blasting a shotgun at the other side. A 180 degree difference than avionics I work with now where every ounce matters and even the aircraft wire insulation shrinks with the development of new Teflon or Kapton derivatives. Everything was made by Western Electric and they shamelessly used huge coil transformers, massive capacitors, incredibly large banks of dense relays and even some of the PCBs were actually made of metal. I know that makes no sense, but they did it. I would drop phones down open elevator shafts, toss a couple down the stairs, etc. and those damn metal/plastic phones were almost indestructible! I dropped a pay phone from a spiral stairwell eight floors up, and the damn thing never came close to cracking open! I mean you'd think they had the Crown Jewels in there or something. Got my respect! Sometimes, and this was strange, the phone company left some lines connected in office buildings being torn down and I'd call a number on one of the coasts. AT&T Long Lines was the only service available and I remember all the crazy sounds I'd hear while the switching systems passed me from one exchange to another using an ungodly amount of microwave towers placed all over the country. Those are all abandoned now thanks to fiber optics and satellites. But it was a crazy symphony of clicks, pops, buzzes and quick touch-tone strings to get a call placed 1000 miles away. I had so much telephone equipment that I could have started my own phone company by 1982, but when they broke up the Bell System, there seemed to be less and less abandoned equipment. Over the years I gave away all my phones, with the exception of a few office versions I always liked, and the power supplies lasted into the 90s as they were so damn well-built. Thick 50 wire cable went everywhere for those 5 line desk phones. I can't imagine the amount of copper abandoned. But you could see this stuff work. I mean is was big, klunky and power-hungry, but you could see the relays activate, stepper switches sequence, the motorized device that enabled the hold, ring, and other blinking functions of the lights on the phone lines. I had phones in almost every room of my parent's house and when they rung, YOU HEARD IT! And get this, and you can actually look this up as a fact, Illinois Bell could call my home and tell us we we had illegal equipment installed and to remove it "or else". This was the Bell System after all, and they had their own investigative branch. And I didn't know until YEARS later that the phone company sensed the amount of phones on a home line by the number of BELLS that would ring at that high voltage. The more bells, the higher the current draw, and their systems detected that. Talk a bout "Big Brother!" I fought common sense by retaining my land line far after is was practical. I always had it and it always worked, even in blackouts. But the lines got so noisy with static and pops that it made it really irritating to use them. When I asked to be disconnected, I told them about the noise and they told me the "inherited the system" or whatever. The real fact is that maintaining land lines is an intensive and expensive effort. I would say that at least 75% of the phone junction boxes I see in yards, or next to buildings, are bent over from being hit by a riding lawn mower, or lost their front covers to scrappers or whatever. They put large black rubber bags over the exposed wiring and splices and used large zip ties and called it a day. But wow! It may have been a monopoly, but we sure did have the best phone system in world during the days of the Bell System. Even today, I'll pick up an old 500-series house phone at a garage sale, turn it upside down, and smile when I see the "Bell System Property, Not For Sale" stamped into the metal base. Your videos really resurrect long forgotten memories of when you had to pay over $1/minute for some long distance calls. This generation will never know the incredible, MASSIVE and labor-intensive world that used to be twisted copper pair all the way from your house to the local phone exchange, then to the world. I really do miss the bizarre noises of the old switching systems. And the "blue boxes" or were they red? Tat could be used to cheat pay phones into thinking quarters were being deposited. I know nothing about that.... Nope, nuthin at all!

Matt Wietlispach

No robo-calls back in those days. Thanks for sharing, Fran.

David Blake

Elegant! It reminds me of the Laurel and Hardy film where Ollie gets an ear full of milk, although that phone was wall mounted.

David Peaker

Great video, Fran. A lot of history in the field of electronics is closely tied to telephony. Tubes, transistors, computers all came into existence largely due to the needs of the phone network. Hoping you can do more in this series. For those who haven’t discovered it, former phone phreaker Evan Doorbell’s YouTube channel has some great recordings made in the 70s of the analog phone system in action. This one is a good introduction: https://youtu.be/eiQ2MwMdYPk

Christopher Isert

I always wanted a candlestick phone. Guess I'll never have one..... :)

Hi Fran. Another great topic and an old-timey cool gadget that blows away anything made today. As an old lineman myself I miss full-duplex because there is no cancelling. I'm waiting for the inevitable day we go back to saying Over and Out! Thanks for being there!

Such a beautiful ring sound. A very similar sound of the dial phones with the single handset and the early plastic casing was the sound of my childhood.

Dr Andy Hill

(All I could muster was a basic DC source in series between two phones. I never found good circuit diagrams for how the exchange knew the difference between on-hook and off-hook even ... I knew it must be "simple" with relays, but just never found a clear explanation.)

Jason Olshefsky

My friends had a kid and I made her a one-line phone ... hopefully she'll get the joys of talking to a friend, even if in the other room, and being able to hear the soft breathing over the slight hiss of the line without any digital compression artifacts...

Jason Olshefsky

The external bell....My folks had their business office in the basement of my childhood home in the 70's and 80's. This is forever instilled in the memories of folks of our generation....