North Electric Galion.

[Dan/Panther]

I picked up that following North Electric Galion at the So. Cal. show today,  for $20.00. It is on my desk and fully functional. It was marked $29.00.  I was checking it out, and the guy said; "give me $20.00, I don't want to take it home". After l got the phone plugged in,  (it was ready to go), I noticed an unusual feature about the phone, can you figure out what it is.
If you know what it is, can you please explain it to me.
D/P

[Craig T]

Great phone D/P, $20 is a great price I would have bought it for that in a heartbeat.

Oh I see it has an extra hole in the finger wheel in front of the 1, no idea what function it serves though.

[Dan/Panther]

I bought another about a month ago for $25.00, and thought I got a great deal with that one. But this on really outdid it.
D/P

[Jim Stettler]

You have an 11 digit FW on a 10 digit dial. The only 11 hole FW (3") that I have seen have been on AE dials, the 11th digit is an A and it is after the 0.

I have never gotten a definitive answer on the 11 digit.  The best answer I heard was that it was for switching to a different "network"

I have a well marked "Collins Radio" 302 with an 11 digit dial. Collins used to have highway based  trucker radio-phones before CB radios.
The "A"  may of been for that network.

Nice find at a great price. That is why I like phone shows.

Jim

[Craig T]

D/P I was doing some google searching for you and see that the 11th hole on the dial only sent 10 pulses.

Search "11 hole dial finger wheel" and it is the 4th article down.

There is some other stuff wrote under that but nothing I can make any sense of.

[Jim Stettler]

D/P I was doing some google searching for you and see that the 11th hole on the dial only sent 10 pulses.

Search "11 hole dial finger wheel" and it is the 4th article down.

There is some other stuff wrote under that but nothing I can make any sense of.

That is true on the 11 digit sticks, On a strowger stick the 11 digit was marked "Long Distance" and was strapped to the 0.

I am not sure about the AE 11 digit 3" dials.

Jim

[Dan/Panther]

When I dial the 11th hole it doesn't break dialtone. So I guess I could conclude it's not a special dial, just the wrong fingerwheel.
D/P

[Phonesrfun]

I believe it is a fingerwheel from a dial that was not used in telephony.  Many times, industrial controls in factories and in some radio remote control applications did use dials with an 11th digit.  The telephony dial is made to be switched "on" at all times when the dial is not being used, and turns off, then back on once for each digit of the dial, so it pulses the system in spurts of turning off.  Industrial dials were supposedly just the opposite.  They created "on" pulses for each digit.  Therefore it is likely that you have a good-ol' telephone dial with an incorrect finger wheel.

Incidentally, the reason there would be no activity on a telephone dial in that extra space between the number 1 hole and the finger stop is there on purpose.

The central office relay switches at the time needed time in between dial pulls to cycle, and that extra space provided the central office with just enough extra time before the speed deamons of the time were ready to pull the next number.

Many know that on non-western dials the zero is in the 6 O'Clock position and the finger stop is in roughly the 5 O'Clock position.  Western dials have the zero at about 4:30 and the finger stop at roughly the 4 O'Clock position.  There is a slightly wider angle between the #1 position and the finger stop on a non Western Electric dial as opposed to that of a Western Electric dial.  I read somewhere that this was because the independants were dealing with such a wide variety of central office equipment that they made the angles that way on purpose so that from the time of the last pulse to the first opportunity for the person doing the dialing would be just that much longer in order to allow the central office equipment to finish their operation before the dialer was able to start pulling the next digit.

Seems like a very small amount of time; probably measured in 100ths of a second, but that's what I have heard.

(Like anyone really cares)  

-Bill Geurts

[Dan/Panther]

I care you can never have too much information.
D/P

[Dennis Markham]

Bill, that is interesting and would certainly explain the differences in the positions. 

[GG]

Bill's right re. the differences in the dials and the reason for that.   The timing difference is about 100 milliseconds or 1/10 of a second. 

Many foreign-made dials have even more space there: for example English (GPO), French, German, Czech, Polish, and Japanese dials have enough space in the solid part of the fingerwheel for 4 more finger holes (compared to 3 on AE, SC, and Kellogg, and 2 on WE).  Some Australian dials also, the ones made by UK manufacturers; but not STC Australia or AWA.   There are others I can't recall at the moment.

Re. the 11-hole AE fingerwheel: look closely at the back of the dial in motion and see if the pulse contact lifter operates at the same time as it does on normal AE dials.  I'm going to guess that it does not, such that the extra hole produces 1 dial pulse, the hole normally above digit 1 produces 2 dial pulses, and so on, such that digit 0 produces 11 pulses. 

If it doesn't work that way, then it probably used a combination of the timing of the dial pulses and the off-normal contact closure, such that an off-normal contact closure without any dial pulses (the extra hole) would be used for some control purpose in the device the dial was attached to. 

[Adam]

I have a page illustrating several 11-hole dials on my site Manufacture Discontinued:

http://www.manufacturediscontinued.com/exhibits/telephones/the-wonderful-world-of-rotary-dials.html

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice, Dave.  I enjoyed reading about the various dials.   Thank you.