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Iskra Telephone

Started by Netdewt, March 09, 2013, 02:37:03 PM

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Netdewt

This looks cool. What can you tell me about these?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=321085796483

LM Ericsson

All I know about Iskra is that Iskra was a telephone manufacturer in Slovenia. I have an Iskra telephone.
Regards,
-Grayson

rdelius

Iskra means "spark". The company also made radios

teka-bb

#3
I wrote a little article about another Iskra phone which was published in TCI's Singing Wires of August 2010.

It contains a little bit of info about the company's history.

Here is the text of the article and a picture of my phone:

Unique Iskra Kranj Phone from Slovenia
by Remco Enthoven

A while back I came across a cute
little phone that, at first glance, looked
German to me. At least the finger wheel
appeared to be of German origin. After a
closer inspection, I found the text "Iskra
Kranj, Yugoslavia" molded in tiny letters
on the back of the housing.
The housing and the handset are made
from an ivory colored phenolic resin.
This is what most of us refer to as Bakelite
although it's probably made from
melamine resin.
The phone itself is very compact and
the quite heavy handset is beautifully
designed.
The phone parts fit snugly into the
housing and are mounted on a heavy
black plastic chassis that is revealed after
removing the metal bottom plate.
The black plastic chassis also shields the
back of the dial from bugs. At the rear
end of the black plastic chassis the switch
hook contacts can be inspected through a
transparent plastic cover.
The ringer of the phone is very small
because one small gong is placed inside a
bigger one. Regrettably, the "slider" that
makes it possible to adjust the volume of
the ringer, is missing.
I found a schematic on the inside of
the metal bottom plate, but there were
no markings that revealed the age of this
phone. The parts appear to be post World
War II.
With the help of Google, I found out
that Iskra is the name of a company that
is located in a town called Kranj in Slovenia,
once part of the former Yugoslavia.
The word Iskra means "spark" in
many Slavic languages. This explains the
shape of the Iskra logo.
Through a site about an exhibition
featuring Iskra's design department, I
found some information regarding the
company's history. (See this month's
Bonus pages.)
I emailed a request for information
about the phone to the organizer of the
exhibition.
After a few days I got a very nice
reply from Cvetka Pozar, senior curator
at the Architecture Museum of Ljubljana.
She told me that Iskra started the production
of telephones in 1948 with the model
ATA 1 which was made under a Siemens
license. This might explain why I thought
the phone was of German origin. In the
1950s Iskra started the production of the
model ATA 12, the one I have, which is
slightly different from the ATA 1. Besides
ivory (ATA 12) this model was produced
in black (ATA 11) and a number of other
colors like green, red, and yellow.
After this model, Iskra designed and
manufactured a number of other telephones
but those are beyond the scope of
this article.
I know now that I am the proud
owner of a little piece of Slovene design
history.
=============================================
Regards,

Remco, JKL Museum of Telephony Curator

JKL Museum of Telephony: http://jklmuseum.com/
=============================================
TCI Library: http://www.telephonecollectors.info/
=============================================

unbeldi

The company was really a multi-industry conglomerate at some point, much like General Electric or Westinghouse in the US, but they got broken up in the 80s or 90s.
Their designs, not only for telephones, were astonishing, and won awards around the world. This is especially remarkable, as the 'socialist' states weren't exactly viewed as innovative in the West, but then Yugoslavia was quite a rebel among that class of states, aspiring for ideological independence.

migette

Hi the ATA11 is based on the Albiswerk of the Swiss off shoot of Siemens, there is slight differences but the case is the same. I have both these phones on You Tube User migette1

HarrySmith

This topic is over 5 years old. The auction pictures are gone.
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"