Why does this phone have a dial + a magneto

[recyklotron]

Greetings from snowed in Massachusetts,

I came across this phone on eBay  http://preview.tinyurl.com/bkey9pr
and am curious to know the reason for both the dial & magneto . Is it a design found only on European phones?

Thanks very much,
      Jonathan

[davidbholcomb]

My guess would be that since the housing looks like gloss black paint and the housing for the dial looks like flat black paint that the dial was added to the phone at a latter date and the phone converted from magneto service to dial service.

[paul-f]

Phones with both magnetos and dials were used in areas where a magneto line user may  be connected to a dial line to place calls without using the operator.  Northern Electric had several models that were used in Canada.  Here's one example from the T3 catalog.

[Catalog page added.]

[Haf]

Hi, I was wondering about that too. I've got an American Electric Ringer Box with Magneto and wiring diagram for a dial telephone.

Haf

[LarryInMichigan]

The dial on the ebay phone is from much later than the phone.  I would be sure that someone added the dial much more recently.

Larry

[dsk]

I go for Larrys theory, but the nice diagram over teached me about a different dial system.

I had to rearrange the diagram to see how it works, and ended up with this scetch.

dsk

[G-Man]

These instruments used composite dialing* to make regular exchange calls and magneto signaling to call other parties on their line. If the line was damaged they could still call each other using the magnetos.

By the way, the tinyurl link was not working when I tried it. Is there an eBay item number?

*Not Standard Loop Dialing!

[Owain]

EBAY

[dsk]

Greetings from snowed in Massachusetts,

I came across this phone on eBay  http://preview.tinyurl.com/bkey9pr
and am curious to know the reason for both the dial & magneto . Is it a design found only on European phones?

Thanks very much,
      Jonathan

To just answer this:
No its not only European, the combination of both dial and magneto-generator has not been the normal, but has sometimes been used in different systems. I know it has been used in Sweden, and Canada. It has probably been used other places too. Some smaller telcos, just added a dial and rearranged the circuit to cut costs, sometimes it was done because it was shortage of automatic telephones. Later the dials has been retrofitted to make nostalgic phones working on "modern" lines.
My guess is just this, about the phone in the picture.  The circuit diagrams in this thread are not suitable for regular exchanges.

dsk

[poplar1]

The Ebay phone appears to be a phonecoinc (Ron Knappen) conversion. They had at least one employee that did the gold artwork.

I once purchased a WE 1317 that came from an estate in Tupelo, Mississippi. It had been converted to dial service--apparently by the phone company-- by adding a 39A dial mountng and 4H dial below the transmitter.. (This is the same dial mounting used on a 201 spacesaver.) The gererator was still in the phone but disconnected and the crank had been removed.

It might be a good idea to disconnect the generator in the 1717 if you are planning to use it on a modern line.