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Working Title: "Can You Hear Me Now?"
There's really not much I can say about these phones, except that they were planned for being thrown out because of obsolescence, and that I saved them from their ultimate demises.
Both phones were made by the now defunct GTE Automatic Electric telecommunications company, and both are among the AE-80E series, which was produced from 1975 to 1986 as a successor to the AE-80 series. The one on the left is a Touch Tone phone from 1975, and the one on the right is a late rotary model from around 1983. After cleaning the outer cases and the leaf switches in each phone, I outfitted the Touch Tone phone with a mute button for the transmitter (microphone), and I converted it to utilize the more common modular RJ-11 jack. The rotary phone already has an RJ-11 socket in the back. I used Photoshop to blank out the phone number labels to protect the identities of the phones' previous owners. I plan to replace the labels with my own telephone number in the future.
In case you're comfortable enough to service a vintage rotary phone: You can safely clean any phone with foaming bathroom cleaner, and it will strip away the dirt without compromising the plastic, Bakelite, or other material. As for the dial itself, what I did was put a piece of paper in between the contacts of the leaf switches, and joined the contacts while gently dragging the piece of paper out of the switch itself. It was enough to remove any filth that had accumulated over the course of 36 years, and thus making the dial more reliable.
Interesting fact: GTE was acquired by Bell Atlantic in 2000, and the two merged companies became what is now known as Verizon.
There's really not much I can say about these phones, except that they were planned for being thrown out because of obsolescence, and that I saved them from their ultimate demises.
Both phones were made by the now defunct GTE Automatic Electric telecommunications company, and both are among the AE-80E series, which was produced from 1975 to 1986 as a successor to the AE-80 series. The one on the left is a Touch Tone phone from 1975, and the one on the right is a late rotary model from around 1983. After cleaning the outer cases and the leaf switches in each phone, I outfitted the Touch Tone phone with a mute button for the transmitter (microphone), and I converted it to utilize the more common modular RJ-11 jack. The rotary phone already has an RJ-11 socket in the back. I used Photoshop to blank out the phone number labels to protect the identities of the phones' previous owners. I plan to replace the labels with my own telephone number in the future.
In case you're comfortable enough to service a vintage rotary phone: You can safely clean any phone with foaming bathroom cleaner, and it will strip away the dirt without compromising the plastic, Bakelite, or other material. As for the dial itself, what I did was put a piece of paper in between the contacts of the leaf switches, and joined the contacts while gently dragging the piece of paper out of the switch itself. It was enough to remove any filth that had accumulated over the course of 36 years, and thus making the dial more reliable.
Interesting fact: GTE was acquired by Bell Atlantic in 2000, and the two merged companies became what is now known as Verizon.
Category All / Miscellaneous
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 3000 x 2250px
File Size 1001.3 kB
Listed in Folders
Surprisingly, I actually know about party lines. Of course, I've seen them in action in movies made prior to 1980, but my mother says her family had one as well when she was growing up. Heck, I can remember a time where we didn't need to dial the area code first to make a local call.
I think the switch from 7-digit local calls to 10-digit ones happened around 1996, because I remember having to reconfigure our modem to work with the new system.
Do you remember when people would slam the handset back onto the hook after a heated argument over the phone?
I think the switch from 7-digit local calls to 10-digit ones happened around 1996, because I remember having to reconfigure our modem to work with the new system.
Do you remember when people would slam the handset back onto the hook after a heated argument over the phone?
Oh you betcha... and the resounding click was loud on the other end. In my home town, you only had to dial the last four digits to call someone. In 1970 at the New York Museum of Science, they had a display comparing the push button phone to the dial type to show how much faster it was.
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