Help with my 4th-generation telephone history

[Wallphone]

Daniel asked - "For some reason, it seems like working examples of lighted Starlites and PARTICULARLY Stylelines are VERY rare today! In the case of the Styleline, could it have been because of concerns about sending 115VAC through the handset cord? I seem to recall hearing that in later years, A.E. also disabled many working lights in the Starlites out in the field over concerns about the 115VAC. I'm not sure why, because I would think the 5mA resistor plug would take care of safety concerns, and they did have U.L. approval... Could you enlighten me on this?"
This discussion came up on the TCI Listserv about two years ago and it seems that having 115 volts running through the phone wasn't a good idea in the bathroom, especially when someone set the phone on the bathtub edge and talked while they were taking a bath. If the phone fell in the tub there was a good chance that something bad could happen if the person in the tub touched any of the plumbing such as the faucet, thereby giving the electricity an easy path to ground. (Through You)
Dougpav

[zuperdee]

I have a hard time believing it was JUST bathtub electrocutions that A.E. was worried about. After all, this same danger would apply to *ANY* household electrical device running on wall power, and I'd be willing to bet that 8 times out of 10 bathtub electrocutions every year are due to hair dryers, not Panelescent-lit telephones or anything else, and that's why modern electrical code requires GFCI-protected outlets in the bathroom now. No, I can't help but think there must have been some bigger, more pressing reason why A.E. went to the trouble of disabling and removing the lights from their Starlites and Stylelines.

[Wallphone]

I'm just telling you what I heard. Yes, there are many ways to get electrocuted in the bathroom but AE was only worried about their phone, and none of the others. Also, they didn't have ground fault interrupter's back then. Maybe Terry knows more about this.
Dougpav

[AE_Collector]

Maybe Terry knows more about this.
Dougpav

No, not really. I've just heard all the same stories as you guys. Something must have scared them and scared them good!

The 1st geenration of Starlite phone had the Color Coordinated 120 VAC cord running directly from the wall to the telephone. It did have the same in-line resistors but they were mounted inside the phone base. The next generation Starlite moved the resistor to the plug at the AC wall outlet and then the current limited AC went in lamp cord to the set block where it met up with the 4th & 5th leads of the set cord to supply power to the set. SO the difference here is that dropping the phone into the bathtub still only subjects a person to max 5MA as compared to the 1st generation phone that could subject the person to 15 AMPS.

I hear rumours that something happened and the threat of legal action (or maybe real legal action) got them thinking real carefully about these phones. I have no way of knowing if there is any truth to it or not. I also have no way of knowing if it was a 1st or 2nd generation Starlite phone.

Here in British Columbia it appears that we disabled or tossed out any 1st generation sets that came back in and there *may* have been a directive to cut off the AC cord on these sets in the field but I have only seen one or two sets with the AC cord chopped off. We were still installing Starlites (2nd generation) including illumination into the 1970's, maybe almost until 1980.

I don't know of us ever even trying illuminated Styleline's here. The only one I have in my collection came from the USA so illuminated Stylelines may have never been manufactured by AE Canada. Generally the Canadian electrical code seems to be a bit tougher than the US code on several fronts so maybe they didn't even try to get approval in Canada.

Terry

PS:
I moved a bunch of discussion about Illuminated AE Stylelines to this topic:

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=8342.0

Terry