Hi, I'm from London, have a small collection of British 'phones and one American one, a WE 500, with another, a AE 80 on its way to me. I have a '50s Bakelite 310, pretty much the British equivalent of the 302, several 706 and 746, roughly equal to the 500, though probably closer to the AE80 in styling. Hoping to get a 150 Candlestick) and 200 series (older pyramid shaped Bakelite) someday. Also have a few earlier electronic push-button 'phones from the '80s, but am not really interested in anything after that.
I work as an I.T. Technician at a College, where amongst other things I look after a Mitel 3300 system with something like 800 extensions, about one third of them IP, the rest of them analogue. I also do occasional work as a relief projectionist at a local cinema.
Welcome, Stephen. You'll love our group. Will American phones work in the mother country without significant modification?
Welcome. It's pretty fun having this forum of folks from around the globe all with an interest in old phones. I'm in California, and have only seen the old BPO phones in pictures.
Well, I've only been able to try one so far, but that does. British 'phones used to be hard-wired, with low-impedance bells wired in series when extension 'phones wee installed. Around 1981 we switched to a modular plug-in system, with high-impedance bells wired in parallel. The bell capacitor is now in the master socket, and secondary sockets are wired in a three-wire system, four wires if earth recall is needed. If an old 'phone is converted some links inside it are moved to take the old capacitor in the 'phone out of circuit, but it is left in place, so the conversion can be reversed. If I just take the two main wires of the line I can connect an American 'phone to them. Our ringing current is different, it's 75V 25Hz., with a cadence of 0.4s on, 0.2s off, 0.4s on, 2s off, to give the characteristic Brrr-Brrr Brrr-Brrr double ring that we have here.
Our dial pulses are also different; I believe yours are 60% and 40%, whereas ours are 66% and 34%, but it's close enough to work. It's still 10 pps.
It's interesting that people from here have bought the BT Tone Dialers from the Ebay seller in the UK, and say they work fine with a WE 500; I bought two of these, and I've found that they work fine with everything I've tried them with, even the old 310 where you can't get it close to the microphone, except my WE 500, which doesn't seem to wok at all with it at the moment, I'm not sure why. The instructions which come with it say that it may not work with old carbon microphones, but I've found it works fine with these.
Quote from: McHeath on March 14, 2009, 07:08:13 PM
Welcome. It's pretty fun having this forum of folks from around the globe all with an interest in old phones. I'm in California, and have only seen the old BPO phones in pictures.
Hi, There is a pretty complete collection of British 'phones, GPO/PO/BT on this site:
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/
This site has a lot of information, including a full list of model numbers, and details of connecting up:
http://www.britishtelephones.com/
Finally, this site has a large collection of documents, including Post Office 'N-Diagrams', which are useful for anybody wanting to work on British 'phones:
http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/index.htm#Railway
Greetings Stephen,
I'm curious if you bought your WE500 from the US, and if so how much was the shipping cost to the UK. I'm also wondering what it would cost to ship a phone from the UK to the US.
Last week I sadly had to pass up one of those nice two-tone green British phones from the 1970s, being sold on Ebay from Alberta, Canada, because the shipping to Northern California was $28. :P
That sounds like good work you did on your 500 birthday phone. I admire your perseverance (blood, sweat and tears) and now you have a real classic icon of a phone. :)
Quote from: HobieSport on March 14, 2009, 10:19:09 PM
Greetings Stephen,
I'm curious if you bought your WE500 from the US, and if so how much was the shipping cost to the UK. I'm also wondering what it would cost to ship a phone from the UK to the US.
Last week I sadly had to pass up one of those nice two-tone green British phones from the 1970s, being sold on Ebay from Alberta, Canada, because the shipping to Northern California was $28. :P
It's very expensive, because these things are heavy. I also paid a lot of money for the 500, because it's in very nice condition. The AE80 I got for just $9.99, mine was the only bid, but in both cases the shipping was about $40, and then on top of that I have to pay 15% tax on the total cost including shipping, and 8 pounds handling charge when it arrives. The last time I sent something to the US I seem to remember that it was even more expensive in that direction.
There are some things to watch out for if you want to get British 'phones to work over there, but it's 03:15 here now, and time for bed. I can pot details tomorrow, if you're interested.
Hi Stephen:
Welcome to the forum! Some years ago I started collecting foreign phones and have a few British ones. They include a 232 with drawer, 332, 706 ivory and a 722 Trimphone. I also have several German phones some of which I picked up in Germany. I rarely look for those phones now as (as you stated) the shipping is too expensive but I would still like a green 706.
Steve
Welcome Stephen to our forum. Thank you for the links to the British phones. I have to plead ignorant when it comes to non-American telephones. I have enjoyed seeing photos that some of our members have posted here. It's good to have you on board.
Welcome Stephen, now we know where to go for info on British phones...
D/P
welcome!
Hi Stephen and welcome,
I'm also new to this great forum and from London.
Coincidently I was a projectionist for 25 years.
Lee
Welcome!
Two projectionists from London...what are the odds? Now if only we could "project" a few phones across "the pond" to each other without all that expensive shipping and tax...
Stephen and Contraste; what might be the nearest British telephone equivalents to the 1940s Western Electric 302 and the 1950s WE500?
Quote from: HobieSport on March 18, 2009, 01:27:41 AM
Two projectionists from London...what are the odds? Now if only we could "project" a few phones across "the pond" to each other without all that expensive shipping and tax...
Stephen and Contraste; what might be the nearest British telephone equivalents to the 1940s Western Electric 302 and the 1950s WE500?
When I was projecting the telephone in the box didn't ring very often, but when it did it always seemed to be in the last few seconds of a reel; several times I had to wait for the motor cue, run the length of the box, ask the caller to wait for a few seconds, and run back to the incoming machine just in time to hit the changeover button.
The nearest thing to the 302 would be the 300 series, but these were bakelite, not metal or thermoplastic like the 302. There were many different versions of the 300 series, some with buttons for various functions, some without dials etc. and they all had different numbers. The vast majority of the 300 series were black, but a smaller number were made in ivory, red and green; the red and green are very rare
The nearest thing to the 500 would be the 706 of 1959 This evolved quite a bit during its life, and was eventually replaced by the quite similar 746. These telephones are thermoplastic, but I think it's a slightly different type to that used for the 500. The style of the 706 is rather different to the 500; it's more like that of the AE 80. The 706 was made in seven colours, with brown being added for the 746. There were less different versions of these 'phones produced, ans extra parts could be fitted to standard models for special purposes.
Go to this site:
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/
There are lots of pictures, the 300 series are in the Telephones pre-1960 section, and the 706 and 746 in the Telephones 1960-1980 section.
Thank you much for the British telephone link, Stephen. Very informative!
http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/
Here are pictures of the GPO 312L, 332L and 706L telephones from that site for us Yanks to compare to the WE 302s and 500s.
For folks on the forum, the "L" suffixes simply meant that the dials had letters as well as numbers.
Very interesting.
I lived in London in the mid-70's for a year, and the 'phone numbers were like ours - seven digits with a dash after the first three. But out in the country, where I knew no-one, the numbers started with the name of the town, as seen above. I never knew how one would do that.
I really like those braided cords.
Quote from: Ellen on March 18, 2009, 10:40:21 AM
I lived in London in the mid-70's for a year, and the 'phone numbers were like ours - seven digits with a dash after the first three. But out in the country, where I knew no-one, the numbers started with the name of the town, as seen above. I never knew how one would do that.
I really like those braided cords.
Strictly speaking, the London numbers had nine digits at that time, but the first two, 01, were for London, so you didn't need to dial those if you were calling from within the 01 area. Most other cities had codes with more than two digits, 021 for Birmingham, 061 for Manchester, 0865 (later 01865) for Oxford for example. The letters had been officially dropped before the '70s, but some people continued to use them, and you may have seen old signs etc. There's still one today outside a barber's shop which I pass on my way to work.
Let's consider a London example; it's a long story, and there have been several changes. in the Westminster area there used to be an exchange called Abbey; somebody whose number was Abbey 1234 would show it on signs and letterheads etc. as ABBey 1234 or ABB 1234, which is what you dialled. If you look at the dial with the letters you will see that both the A and the B are in the 2 position, so when you dialled ABB 1234 you were really dialing 222 1234. Note that there is no 'Q' on most dials; there was no exchange code in Britain which had a 'Q' in it which is rather surprising, you'd think there would be a Queens, Queensbury, Queensborough, or something similar, but there wasn't. There was a French code with a 'Q' in it, so french dials did have this letter.
Two things happened at about the same time in the '60s; the first was that STD was introduced. This had nothing to do with Sexually Transmitted Diseases as it does today, it stood for Subscriber Trunk Dialing i.e. people were able to dial all national calls themselves, without having to have them connected by the operator; I remember how impressed I was when we were first able to dial through to my aunt, who lived about 200 km away! Today I think nothing of dialing a call to China. This required the addition of codes such as 01 for the city. The second change was that the letters were dropped, and all-figure numbers became standard. So, at this time, ABB 1234 became 01-222 1234, but, as I said before, you didn't need to dial the 01 if you were calling from within London; you could just dial 222 1234.
This was fine until the late '80s, when we started to run out of numbers. The decision was made to split London into two areas, inner and outer. The inner became 071, and the outer 081 in about 1990. 01-222 1234 was in inner London, so it became 071-222 1234. As before, if you were dialing from within the area you could just dial 222 1234, but if you were calling from the outer London area you had to dial the whole thing. This was sometimes a bit odd; if you were right on the boundary between the two zones you might have to dial the full number to get to somewhere just on the other side of the street, but could just dial the shortened form to get to somewhere miles away.
The next change came just a few years later, when a 1 was inserted, so 171 became 0171, and 081 became 0181. Therefore our old ABBey number now became 0171-222 1234.
The demand for numbers continued to grow and after a few more years there was the final change so far. The two parts of London were re-united under one code, 020, but an extra digit, the 7 or 8 from the old code, was added before the 7 digits, so our number then became 020 7222 1234. Many people incorrectly wrote this as 0207 222 1234 but this is wrong, the code for London is 202, not 0207, and if you want to dial the shortened form from within London it's now 7222 1234, though few people do this now, as they have become used to using the full number, as you have to when you use a mobile.
Strictly speaking, the full number is now +44 (0) 20 7222 1234, though you don't need to dial the country code from within the UK, and when calling from outside you don't usually dial the 0 in the brackets. I believe the international prefix from the US is 011, so to dial this number from over there you would dial 011 44 20 7222 1234. If you have a means of making cheap international calls try it. You'll need a touch-tone phone, but it gives the option for recorded information, or to speak to a human, and it's a very useful number to know if you're visiting London. It's the Transport for London, Ex. London transport, travel information line.
The braided cords were good, they wore well, were very flexible, and didn't show the dirt, which was probably a good thing, as they would be difficult to clean. They also faded somewhat after many years; I've got one that I'm going to try to dye.
Wow, that's complicated! We have seen a lot of growth in new area codes here in the US in the last 20 years, but it's pretty much still the same pattern of 589-0964 if you live in the same area code, and 1 (805) 598-0964 if you live in a different area code but are calling from inside the country. (This was the number I grew up with) Sometimes you have to dial the 1 first, for semi-long distance, then the number minus the area code, such as 1-589-0964, but we don't have to do that here in my region anymore. Exchange names went the way of the Dodo before my time and I always just knew the numerical prefix.
I was reading a story with my 5th graders today and it was set in the 80's, pre cell phone days, and a huge part of the plot revolves around the phone lines getting knocked down in a fire and the main characters inability to find another working phone. Had to explain how that time period worked, all phones hardwired to a landline, you could only call from certain places like homes and public payphones, it's a mystery era for the kiddos most of whom have cells phones that are better than mine. Another big part of the plot is the main character losing the piece of paper with the phone number on it she needs to call, which required another explanation of how we used to have to actually remember phone numbers instead of simply program them into our cells and forget them. God, I sound old! :P
Sorry, I've just noticed that I made an error in my last post, which I've now corrected; I put an 8 where I should have put a 7 in the current 020 number.
Not all dials had the letters; I've got a Bakelite model 310F; The 310 should be a shared service model according to the N-Diagram for it, which this one isn't, which means that it must have been converted at some time. However, the 'F' for figures suggests that the dial, which has only numbers, is original. Models with lettered dials normally had a 'L' suffix.
Welcome to our forums.......
Bill Cahill