Classic Rotary Phones: Repair, Refurbish, Restore Vintage Telephones

This one has that suitable for framing look, doesn’t it? Merry Christmas all!

This is probably my favorite cover of all. My copy of the magazine is in horrible condition, so I had to do some serious Photoshop work to restore a semblance of its former glory. (you can see what I started with here) Forum visitors will no doubt recognize the phone, as I used the image as a template for some of the Charter Member avatars and signatures.

I have several telephone industry publications with great Christmas cover art, and would like to share some of them over the next couple of days. Merry Christmas!

From the archives of the Library of Congress comes this interesting peek into Santa’s Workshop, circa 1906. This image is said to have been one side of a stereo card, but the clear view of the photo studio at the top shows this to be a preliminary image, not a final one. Given the aspect ratio used on vintage stereo cards, and the fact that they were arched across the top, I can definitely seeing how this photo could have worked in that capacity.
I’ve already touched on the popularity of Santa-with-telephone images, and this one features both an oak wall phone and a nice, shiny candlestick. Sure seems like Santa would have a more impressive Christmas tree…
Here’s the phones in a close-up.

Boy, wouldn’t that be something, to get a phone call from Santa Claus himself? In spite of what this vintage postcard might imply, I find it hard to believe that he’d have time to do much of this. After-all, the guy busts his tail making his deliveries, so once he’s done I’m sure that making follow-up calls is the furthest thing from his mind. Once he’s had a couple days of sleep Santa’s probably thinking about nothing but pointing that sleigh towards Tahiti. And then there’s that whole long-distance charge thing. Of course I suppose he could call collect…

Around 100 years ago it was common to see depictions of Santa using a telephone, this 1907 postcard being a good example. This will be old news to the vintage postcard buffs out there, but I only recently discovered that some postcards used to be made of leather. Yep, leather postcards were fairly common for 3 or 4 years, but that came to an end in 1909 when the postal service prohibited their use. (supposedly because they jammed up the new sorting machinery) I’ve also included a photo of the back of the card.