LED Princess?

[poplar1]

Has anyone heard of a line-powered LED in a 702 or 2702 (not 2703 Signature Princess)?

A guy who owned a retail phone store until 1985 told me that a customer brought in a Princess phone with a built-in line-powered LED. He said she had brought it from Miami, Florida.

The LEDs were used on Trimlines by 1974. Customers who leased their modular phones at the phone company mall store in 1974 got the LED phones (including square button TTLs) while the installer/repairman vans still carried the older ones (including round button TTLs) that required installation of a transformer. (The I/R had to install two 625A modular jacks side by side on the baseboard, one for the transformer and one for the phone. There were two cords to the incandescent TML/TTL or PRN. The cords plugged into a splitter in the back of the phone: one marked line and one marked lamp (?).)

The Signature Princess with LED dial didn't come out until the 1990s, the LED TMLs and TTLs  had been around since the 70s, so it is possible that in the 80s there could have been an experimental Princess with LED.

[paul-f]

I'm not aware of any Bell System LED Princess x702s.

However, there are several LED options available from others...

  http://www.google.com/search?q=princess+phone+led&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1;&rlz=

[poplar1]

Correction:

Though my installer friend did tell me about the side-by-side jacks, at that time there were not yet any splitters available. I have seen the above mentioned splitters somewhere but maybe they were not used here, since in any case you couldn't use one on the bottom of a Trimline.

The later (338A?) splitters that were in a "Kit of Parts" available when you picked up a Princess to lease plugged into the wall jack, not the phone. The kit included the transformer with modular jack added to it, a 4-conductor cord, and the special splitter. You used two 4-conductor cords: one from the transformer to the splitter in the wall jack  and the other one from either side of the splitter to the Princess or incandescent Trimline. The splitter was wired so that the red, green, yellow and black of the two sides connected together, but only the red and green went to the wall. This prevented you from feeding 6-8VAC into the house wiring which might have had for example a second line somewhere.

[poplar1]

OK, Paul, I might go along with an LED lamp for the Princess, but  I'm still not ready for a cordless phone or cell phone. Or for VOIP as my only line.