There’s a gaggle (about twenty, isn’t that close to a gaggle?) of new ads posted in the Vintage Telephone Advertisements area. They are pretty diverse, spanning from the ’40s through the ’60s, and they all represent either the Bell System in general or Western Electric in particular.
Short of resorting to some sort of javascript shenanigans, I haven’t been able to come up with a good method of showcasing the new additions to the Vintage Phone Advertisements pages. As a result, finding the new stuff requires one to scan through all of the ads to see the new ones, hardly an ideal arrangement. The problem is aggravated by my having put them into an approximate chronological order, as otherwise it would be a simple matter of putting the new ones up front. Perhaps I’ll have some sort of an epiphany and arrive at a solution to this one of these days. As you’re browsing, don’t miss the 1958 Bell ad about a family that can’t find a motel vacancy. Dad calls himself a chump for not calling ahead for a motel. Gotta love it!
Archive for July, 2008
I’ve dug up yet another photograph that shows a Telephone Pioneers of America get-together, this one celebrating, or at least held in the year of, their 50th Anniversary. The anniversary took place in 1961, the General Assembly Meeting of that year taking place in Boston. I suspect, however, that this photograph shows a smaller, regional meeting.
Marketing a product or service has often featured a mascot of some sort, something that can serve to etch the product into the public consciousness. Remember the oil company slogan and mascot from the ’60s, “Put a tiger in your tank”? That promotion by Esso (or Enco or Humble, depending on where you lived), with its cartoon-like tiger, was a huge success. I remember well the “tiger tails” that were given away with fill-ups, intended to be looped over the gas filler neck of customer’s cars. It seemed that every car on the road had one, and a surprising number of unfortunates actually put the tail inside their gas tank! But I digress. We’re here to talk about an entirely different promotion, the one that hailed the introduction of Bell’s Princess Phone. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, those were the days, when the walking installer could be seen trudging down the street, sagging under the weight of telephones and tools. Actually, I don’t remember those days, and neither do you, as this breed of hard-working telephone man was unique to the earliest years of the 20th century. So who were these guys, and what set of circumstances resulted in telephone installers being loaded down like pack animals?
I would never have given any of this a second thought if it weren’t for my interest in vintage telephone trade journals and books. The term “Walking installer” comes up all the time in the old periodicals, particularly in articles that wax poetic about the old days. I really cannot stress enough that the expression “walking installer” was universally understood, an industry term that described a type of telephone worker. Even though they seem to have vanished from the scene in the ’20s, career telephone men in the ’30s and ’40s knew who they were. If you Google walking installer today, do you know what you get? Nothing. Not only is the term no longer relevant in today’s world, but it hasn’t warranted a mention in any online historical reference. I’m sure I’ll get to the bottom of this eventually, but I’ve yet to find much about these guys. Three possible reasons come to mind that could partly explain the preponderance of “stuff” they carried. Firstly is the sheer size of phones and their parts. The earliest oak phones were huge, heavy, and I for one would not want to spend much time with a couple of magneto telephones strapped to me. Read the rest of this entry »
Back before cellular phones made them obsolete, these drive-up telephones were the greatest. Obviously a novelty at the time, I don’t recall seeing these in my area until probably around 1980! This photo and caption appeared in the September 1960 issue of The Telephone Bay Stater.
I get ideas for posts from a number of different sources, but often as not they’re based on something that’s been on my mind, maybe a project I’ve been working on. The inspiration for this post however, came to me after reading an unusual article about the “beep-beep line” on Dennis Markham’s VintageRotaryPhones.com. Something I was previously unaware of, the post describes a quirk of the telephone network that used to permit something akin to the chat capability of a party line. Initiated by calling ones own number, kids would talk over the busy signal to others who were likewise engaged… harmless childhood hijinks at their finest. (for a full description, read: The Beep-Beep Line) This apparently was very popular with those “in the know”, and wish I had been one of the privileged few who enjoyed partaking in that bit of silliness.
I may have missed out on the beep-beep line, but the story reminded me of my own childhood and a strange, secretive activity that was popular when I was in elementary school: calling “The Man in the Moon”. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve made some additions to the Vintage Phone Advertisements area, including some very early Automatic Electric and Bell System ads. I’ve also posted more General Telephone ads from the ’50s, all featuring the artwork of Dom Lupo. But my favorite is the two-page spread shown above. This Western Electric ad covers the various choices to be considered when selecting a phone, with color, cord type, volume control and dial illumination all being offered. Why, there’s even an automatic answering set that can take messages when you’re not home! Silly idea…
I thought I’d share this cartoon that was published in the September 1960 issue of The Telephone Bay Stater, and edition brimming with “stuff” about the newly released Princess Phone. You know, good Princess Phone humor is getting harder and harder to find…
Other than historians and old phone nuts, few people today know the outrageous heights that telephone poles once attained. Ninety foot poles with thirty crossarms are known to have been employed in New York in the 1880s, much to the detriment of the urban landscape. As many as three-hundred wires were carried on these monstrosities, the tightly clustered lines collapsing each winter under the burden of snow. The era of these many-tiered poles lasted only about ten years, as underground wires ultimately served to alleviate the skyward congestion. This photograph and its caption appeared in the trade magazine, Telephony.
Even “back in the day”, in this case 1947, telephones were being refurbished and put back into service. This ad appeared in the September issue of Telephony, and one can’t help but wonder much they got for those model 553s. They call them 1553s, but the picture looks like what I know as the model 553. Anyone know about this? In any event, they were very antiquated phones in ‘47!
Released in 1937, Western Electric’s model 302 was a significant evolutionary step, one that served subscribers loyally for nearly twenty years. They now enjoy a good deal of popularity among old phone enthusiasts, those who can appreciate their sound design, classic styling and historical significance. Now days the 302 is often called the “Lucy phone”, apparently named by those whose pre-1980 knowledge was obtained from TV reruns. Upon completion of the design Henry Dreyfuss and his team began work on a companion wall-mount version, the model 354. Its release was intended to follow closely on the heels of the 302’s introduction, but then World War II came into play. The shift to wartime production had the unfortunate consequence of delaying the 354’s release until 1946, only three years before Western Electric released their revolutionary new desk phone, the model 500.
The 354 used the same electrical/mechanical components as the 302 of the time, including the #6 dial, 101B induction coil, F1 handset, and B2 ringer. The first 302s had zinc alloy housings, but soon switched to thermoplastics for their construction, the material employed on all 354s. The model 554, a wall version of the 500, came out in 1956, so after roughly nine years of production the 354 rode off into the sunset. Read the rest of this entry »
From the October issue of Telephone Engineer comes these ads for Automatic Electric. I don’t know much about the trade journal, but it’s interesting that the cover calls it “Fortnightly Telephone Engineer”. Whew! Today, the word fortnightly would certainly have people scrambling for their dictionaries. Read the rest of this entry »
From the same issue of Telephony as the previous Kellogg ads comes this two-page spread by Stromberg-Carlson. There must have been surrealism in the air in ‘47, as both this ad and one by Leich made use of rather creepy imagery to deliver their messages. Sorry that the center crease and staples are so evident, but I prefer not to destroy a cool vintage magazine just to get a better scan.
I’ve been pouring over a 1947 issue of the trade publication, Telephony, and found some advertisements that are too good not to share. The issue in question, dated September 27, 1947, is a special USITA 50th anniversary issue, USITA standing for, United States Independent Telephone Association. Many of the ads specifically address the 50th anniversary and/or the USITA annual convention, to be held on Oct. 14-15-16 at Chicago’s Stevens Hotel. Included in the magazine are ads from Western Electric, Leich, Stromberg-Carlson, and many other smaller suppliers, but since I’ve been following a Kellogg theme, I wanted to start by posting two full-page advertisements for that manufacturer. Kellogg celebrating their 50th anniversary right along with the USITA, and promoted that fact in these two ads. No doubt fueled by the hoopla of the anniversary and convention, Kellogg posted what must have been expensive advertisements, given the extensive use of color. The blue and gold scheme is striking, but unfortunately it doesn’t come across at all well in the scans. The gold just looses something in the translation. Read the rest of this entry »
Finally it’s done. I’ve made four web pages to accommodate scans, thumbnail size, of each page of the Kellogg K-500 Handbook. The thumbnails can be left-clicked to reveal a large version. Quite large. I’ve compressed the size of the large images down to around 500k, depending on the image in question, but I realized that a few of the one-hundred or so scans missed the compression step. As a result, some of them (about thirty?) are more in the neighborhood of 1.5 meg in size! I’m going to get right at fixing that particular error, as well as “proof-reading” to assure that I’ve not skipped any pages. Keeping track of them was a bit of a challenge, but I finally figured out that they assigned numbers to pages that were blank. Don’t panic if you see skipped numbers. It just means that I didn’t bother to scan pages with no content!
I considered making a pdf version available for download, but the image quality would have had to be reduced too much for my tastes. Besides, it’s already been done, with a pdf of the book available at The Kellogg Telephone Page. (Part of the Telephone Archive, it’s a great site. Pay them a visit!) I’ll be fine tuning the pages over the next few days and will no doubt add more descriptions below the thumbnails, making it a little easier to find stuff. But all-in-all I think it’s looking pretty good. That’s all for now. Enjoy!
