302 marked S-XX-XX is Indigo Black Color?

[G-Man]

Here is a comment from the TCI List-

>
> I have a friend that has a lot of wonderful art-deco things, among 
> them is a  Black Thermoplastic WE 302 with matching numbers.  He 
> showed it to an old old time phone guy that used to set up every 
> weekend at the local flea market --  until his van, with all his 
> phones, got stolen.  My friend showed him the Black 302 -- he got it 
> at a garage sale and after he  cleaned it up at home, he realized 
> that it was dead mint.  Like, it had never been used.  So he took it 
> to the phone guy to look it over.  He just stood there... he looked 
> kinda weird....
>
> He told him something very interesting:  After looking at the black 
> thermoplastic 302, he took out a pocket knife, shaved off a little 
> piece off the bottom edge, and held it up to the light:  it was blue.
>
> He said the rarest of the 302s are black thermoplastic ones that were 
> made for a very brief period during WWII, when they ran out of carbon 
> (for coloring) they used indigo to make black.
>
> He said finding an Indigo black thermo in mint condition is the 
> rarest of them all.
>

>
>

[Gilas]

Well sounds logical.  Maybe that is why everything in the phone is stamped with the "S" all the way down to the dial so that they know that it was part of the special batch.  Thanks for the information. 

[AE_Collector]

Baldopeacock posted this from Jim S. from another discussion:

I have heard of oddball indigo 302 sets produced by WE. They used clear plastic and indigo. The resulting sets were Black in apperance. You can flake a rib to check in a bright light. You might try tilting the housing so a rib is in a bright light and see if it is truely black.I am thinking the indigo sets had other odd things about them as well. This story was 2-3rd hand and was on one of the listservers several years ago.Your set reminded me of the story.I think your set was either done by a collector or a special order by a customer.  WE would do special orders and  a "colored" black set would of been easy.

JMO, Jim S.

[unbeldi]

The S– prefix has been discussed also here:

* http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=11422.msg154971#msg154971
* http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=15203.0

In summary, there is no firm explanation, but I think a high correlation to time of manufacture of sets in St. Paul, MN.  In 1944, WECo bought a factory there to resume manufacturing 302 telephone sets after the WPB authorized limited quantities.

S–  =?  St. Paul

H–  =?  Hawthorne

The designation H– appeared about a year after S–, and both seem to have disappeared in 1947.


PS:  We now have a more detailed post where this kind of information is logged:  http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=11422.msg167552#msg167552

[Jim Stettler]

S for St. Paul makes sense and it would also make sense that the indigo sets came out of a new production line (lack of needed resources on start up).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is my opinion and speculation:

I think most limited production sets were produced  only at 1 plant, probably on 1 line. Different plants produced different limited runs.  Many clear sets were made in Indianopolis.  I have seen multiple black "pronged" handsets embossed with a 1957 date code. I assume these were probably all made at  the same time on the same line. I think the colored 5302's all came from the same plant, likewise with the post 1955 CAB Tenite sets (mentioned by unibeldi in another thread).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a WE 514 on Paul F's site   http://paul-f.com/we514.htm  , This phone has a lamp hole that has been "capped", I have a similar set and I have seen another example. I suspect these all came from the same plant.


JMO,
Jim S.

[unbeldi]

S for St. Paul makes sense and it would also make sense that the indigo sets came out of a new production line (lack of needed resources on start up).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is my opinion and speculation:

I think most limited production sets were produced  only at 1 plant, probably on 1 line. Different plants produced different limited runs.  Many clear sets were made in Indianopolis.  I have seen multiple black "pronged" handsets embossed with a 1957 date code. I assume these were probably all made at  the same time on the same line. I think the colored 5302's all came from the same plant, likewise with the post 1955 CAB Tenite sets (mentioned by unibeldi in another thread).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a WE 514 on Paul F's site   http://paul-f.com/we514.htm  , This phone has a lamp hole that has been "capped", I have a similar set and I have seen another example. I suspect these all came from the same plant.


JMO,
Jim S.

I do not believe, and I think the evidence speaks against it, that any 5302 sets were produced at factory lines.  Indianapolis (in the 1950s) only molded the housings and shipped upgrade kits to the distributions centers and some to independents.

I think the same applies to the CAB 302 sets made in 1955.  All those sets, re-used old bases and fitted them with new shells.  I have not observed any all-dates matching sets, and my set only has the housing, dial, and refurb stamps matching. The base and components are older, just like it was the case for the 5302.

[Jim Stettler]

S for St. Paul makes sense and it would also make sense that the indigo sets came out of a new production line (lack of needed resources on start up).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is my opinion and speculation:

I think most limited production sets were produced  only at 1 plant, probably on 1 line. Different plants produced different limited runs.  Many clear sets were made in Indianopolis.  I have seen multiple black "pronged" handsets embossed with a 1957 date code. I assume these were probably all made at  the same time on the same line. I think the colored 5302's all came from the same plant, likewise with the post 1955 CAB Tenite sets (mentioned by unibeldi in another thread).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a WE 514 on Paul F's site   http://paul-f.com/we514.htm  , This phone has a lamp hole that has been "capped", I have a similar set and I have seen another example. I suspect these all came from the same plant.


JMO,
Jim S.

I do not believe, and I think the evidence speaks against it, that any 5302 sets were produced at factory lines.  Indianapolis (in the 1950s) only molded the housings and shipped upgrade kits to the distributions centers and some to independents.

I think the same applies to the CAB 302 sets made in 1955.  All those sets, re-used old bases and fitted them with new shells.  I have not observed any all-dates matching sets, and my set only has the housing, dial, and refurb stamps matching. The base and components are older, just like it was the case for the 5302.

Sorry about that. What  I meant to say was (IMHO) the colored housings of the 5302's and tenite 302's were produced at 1 location. Maybe the same location, maybe not. From a production standpoint it would make sense to keep low production items on 1 line or 1 site.

JMO,
Jim S.

[unbeldi]

S for St. Paul makes sense and it would also make sense that the indigo sets came out of a new production line (lack of needed resources on start up).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following is my opinion and speculation:

I think most limited production sets were produced  only at 1 plant, probably on 1 line. Different plants produced different limited runs.  Many clear sets were made in Indianopolis.  I have seen multiple black "pronged" handsets embossed with a 1957 date code. I assume these were probably all made at  the same time on the same line. I think the colored 5302's all came from the same plant, likewise with the post 1955 CAB Tenite sets (mentioned by unibeldi in another thread).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a WE 514 on Paul F's site   http://paul-f.com/we514.htm  , This phone has a lamp hole that has been "capped", I have a similar set and I have seen another example. I suspect these all came from the same plant.


JMO,
Jim S.

I do not believe, and I think the evidence speaks against it, that any 5302 sets were produced at factory lines.  Indianapolis (in the 1950s) only molded the housings and shipped upgrade kits to the distributions centers and some to independents.

I think the same applies to the CAB 302 sets made in 1955.  All those sets, re-used old bases and fitted them with new shells.  I have not observed any all-dates matching sets, and my set only has the housing, dial, and refurb stamps matching. The base and components are older, just like it was the case for the 5302.

Sorry about that. What  I meant to say was (IMHO) the colored housings of the 5302's and tenite 302's were produced at 1 location. Maybe the same location, maybe not. From a production standpoint it would make sense to keep low production items on 1 line or 1 site.

JMO,
Jim S.

I think that makes sense.   In the 50s, that location was most likely Indianapolis. I think Indy was built for the 500 set line initially.

[andre_janew]

With clothing (jeans especially), Indigo is a very dark blue color that is practically black.  This would be why the sliver of plastic had a bluish cast to it when held up to the light.  In other words, the phone isn't really black but an extremely dark blue color.

[unbeldi]

With clothing (jeans especially), Indigo is a very dark blue color that is practically black.  This would be why the sliver of plastic had a bluish cast to it when held up to the light.  In other words, the phone isn't really black but an extremely dark blue color.

That is correct.   I do believe that ALL black plastic sets are actually indigo.  I haven't tested them all obviously, but the couple that I have, are indigo.  Here is an example of a 1948 black set on which I just repaired a corner crack.

I cut one of the inside ribs off from the shell to fill surface damage around the crack line.  About 15 minutes after placing the rib in acetone, the indigo shows its true color:

I don't want to get into the details here about the repair, since the thread is about this interesting S- marked telephone, but this indigo "phenomenon" is really not so mystical.

Also, I observed a quite different blue when dissolving plastic from a 1941 housing, it was more purple than indigo.

[unbeldi]

As I posted on a separate post I got a 302 today that was marked as S-XX-XX showing I was told that it was Shreveport.  As I was cleaning it I noticed that it is a beautiful indigo when held to the sun.  Thinking that it was just the fact that I live in the Pacific NW and rarely see the sun while I happen to be cleaning one I grabbed several other ones around the house and checked.  None of them have this same effect.  I checked various years from 40's thru the 50's and nada.  Anyone know more about this?  I included pictures of the Indigo and the regular black ones held to the sunlight.  Last 2 are the reg black ones

I think this set is an example for a period when Western Electric apparently had troubles with coloring dyes on these sets.  We do not know many details about the processing of raw plastic pellets, but I do believe they purchased them already dyed from Eastman.  They came as fine granules in larger-than-human containers.  I scanned a WE Magazine article about that last year for the TCI library.

The correlation with the S- prefixes is interesting of course, because I think the S mark indicated manufacturing at St. Paul, MN, at a factory that WECo purchased in 1944 to restart telephone production after the war.  We know that they had similar plastic issues in 1941, just before the production of telephones for civilian markets was shut down. Of course 1941 was the first year plastic sets were issued to begin with, so perhaps they still had not much experience with the product even in 1946.

[unbeldi]

BTW, this set is the only one I have seen, that has all major components,  i.e. base plate, housing, ringer, induction coil, and dial marked with an S.