A Really Special W.E. Touchtone Dial

[G-Man]

The dial is labelled "Western Electric"

There is no doubt it is a Western Electric dial. However, it most likely has had the buttons re-arranged out of proper sequence.

Have you ever connected it to see if the proper digits are generated?

Re-arranging the buttons is an old prank, usually committed on April 1, that was pulled on fellow office workers.

[K1WI]

    The dial does work correctly .  Other than the 1st and 3rd row of buttons being swapped the only change is the associated contact :pileup" has been reversed 180 degrees so the correct tone would be operated.  I do remember seeing the standard all number dials in 25 and 35 teletypes and some very specific CO test sets.
   The APTT that this dial was used for was a "lemon"     never saw one of its  type work correctly the earlier versions used perforated tapes to select trunks for testing , making the tapes was a time consuming job and this newer version was supposed to eliminate that work.

Andy F   K1WI    @mgh

[G-Man]

    The dial does work correctly .  Other than the 1st and 3rd row of buttons being swapped the only change is the associated contact :pileup" has been reversed 180 degrees so the correct tone would be operated.  I do remember seeing the standard all number dials in 25 and 35 teletypes and some very specific CO test sets.
   The APTT that this dial was used for was a "lemon"     never saw one of its  type work correctly the earlier versions used perforated tapes to select trunks for testing , making the tapes was a time consuming job and this newer version was supposed to eliminate that work.

Andy F   K1WI    @mgh

Interesting that Western Electric did not re-code their modification to a standard dial. Your dial indeed is uncommon.

[Dave F]

<snip> The all number TT dial did come that way from Western .... 

   Andy F  K1WI     @mgh

Andy,

That's really interesting.  WE was generally very meticulous about documenting changes.  When you move the buttons around you also have to wire the switches differently to match the new positions.  This would have made the modified dial different from a standard 35N1A in a non-trivial way.  I'm surprised that the model number was not changed in some way to indicate that it was indeed an official "factory job".  If you look at the model number of my Arabic dial, you can see that they also printed a stylized "X" above it.  Both of the WE Arabic dials I have seen have this marking.  I'm guessing that this is an indication of the non-standard status of the part.

Dave

PS: Your other modified dials are cute.  Probably a lot of fun when a "regular" person asks to make a call on your phone!