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AECo Bakelite Era Phones - Manufacture Date Discussions

Started by HobieSport, October 27, 2008, 04:02:11 PM

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recrum

Sure can!  Just printed it out.  Any thought on these two?  I'm just trying to get an idea of a parts timeline on when they would have used what, if that makes sense.  I wanted to piece the chrome banded one back to life, but didn't want to get things out of order so to speech.  But then I found out the parts phone I purchased was also kind of rare itself leaves me on the hunt for another parts phone.  Oh where does the insanity end.

AE_Collector

Quote from: recrum on November 19, 2011, 10:17:11 PM
Sure can!  Just printed it out.  Any thought on these two? 

Only in that cloth cords would be the oldest type and vinyl cords the newest. Rubber would be in between somewhere. Check inside to see if the inside wiring is cloth or plastic insulated. Also check to see if the dials are mounted to bakelite tabs in the dial opening or if they have the steel mounting ring that I tried to picture in the codes survey thread.

Another difference that comes up in these is the newer smaller ringers versus the older larger ringers. And some have two sperate capacitors in them, a large one on the base and a small one mounted to the side of the case while others have just the large capacitor with two seperate capacitors inside of it. I have wondered if the two seperate capacitors are used with certain frequency ringers that would have needed a different value capacitor.

Terry

recrum

neither had the medal mounting ring for the dial, but both had two capasitors.  Rubber outside cloth inside.  I filled out the survey and posted to you thread.  Hopefully with the info someone maybe able to decipher which one is older.

rdelius

Some of the earlier type 40s had no finger holds on the side like the type 34 sets.Have seen type 40s with black felt covered bases and a paper ae tag.These might have wartime .
Robby

recrum

what about holes in the plunger blocks?  I mean would the ones with holes for the carry handle have been earlier?

AE_Collector

Quote from: rdelius on November 20, 2011, 12:10:58 AM
Some of the earlier type 40s had no finger holds on the side like the type 34 sets.Have seen type 40s with black felt covered bases and a paper ae tag.These might have wartime .
Robby

I have seen a picture of an Ivory 40 without the finger grips molded into the side. Would love to have one of them! I too have seen the paper tag rather than the gold transfer decal and I might have a 40 with the felt base. I recall a discussion about those on one of the lists a couple or more years ago. I think the conclusion on that might have been war time lack of rubber for the ring so felt was put on the base instead. And someone noted that a lot of the sets thus equipped seemed to be military and equipment destined for the military and other officail uses would have been all they were making for at least a couple of the war years.

Terry

AE_Collector

Quote from: recrum on November 20, 2011, 12:14:49 AM
what about holes in the plunger blocks?  I mean would the ones with holes for the carry handle have been earlier?

The indents in the side were the first thing added to help carry the phone around but most likely the version without the finger grips were just early field trial sets.

First came the plunger blocks without holes and then with holes for the Buttler Handle. Then the Carry Bar replaced the blocks and Buttler Handle. I think any phones that would have gone through a refurb process by AE or a Telco quite likely had a Carry Bar put on it to replace the earlier blocks so not a large number of 40's are seen with blocks.

Terry

recrum


GG



Felt-covered bases: that's new information.  Previously I would have thought a felt-covered base to be someone's attempt to refurbish a 40 without having the correct parts in hand, and doing the best they could.

However, as it turns out, during WW2, *rubber* was the scarcest resource, and gasoline rationing was done largely to reduce the consumption of *rubber tires!*

Back in those days, the US was not only fully self-sufficient in petroleum products, we were a net exporter.  Even with the war, petroleum fuels were not an inherent problem, other than the need to minimize consumption of all resources overall, to ensure there could be no sudden supply or price shocks at an unexpected moment.

However, rubber was the pinch point: there were no satisfactory synthetic replacements for it yet, despite the best efforts of both Allied and Axis powers to come up with something (and of course all of that work was classified).  Rubber was produced in only a few places in the world, primarily in South Asia, and every effort had to be made to prevent the Axis cutting off Allies' rubber supplies.  So by rationing gasoline, two goals were accomplished: preventing sudden changes in demand for petroleum, and more critically, reducing the consumption of tires, enabling the vital supplies of rubber to go into the war effort.

Toward that end, noncritical uses of rubber had to be curtailed for the duration.

And that dovetails perfectly with the finding of a felt base on a WW2-era Monophone. 

It also begs the question of why AE stuck with rubber in the first place, when leather and felt had proved satisfactory to WE and others.  Rubber as a few advantages: when it gets wet it's easily dried, it provides a firm grip on a tabletop, it doesn't tear in the manner of felt, and by leaving most of the baseplate exposed, it allows easier access to various mounting screws without need to have perforations in a leather or felt cover.  However, the manufacturing issues about perforations would be easy enough to solve.  This may have been a "tradition" thing with AE, using rubber gaskets since the type 21 desk stand and seeing no reason to switch (until the war made it necessary). 

AE_Collector

#39
I have seen the felt base with the paper AE label glued to the felt so that was not likely a reurbishers work. Of course gluing a paper label to felt wasn't ideal but it got the job done in a pinch.

Terry

recrum

another difference I've spotted after further looking at the photos (which it's kind of obvious, don't know why i didn't see it earlier).  The coil on the one had a medal base and holes to kinda route the wires going to the base of the phone.

recrum

One question?  where the patents specific to each individual phone?  The phone I have with the chrome bands and dial wheel has the patent number for the extensicord while the other phone does not.

dsk

#42
http://tinyurl.com/a9ml9m6
$35  seems to be OK for a SL ringer version?
dsk

HowardPgh

With out seeing the inside it is hard to tell. Even then there are no solid clues.  The SL sticker on the bottom probably says when a SL ringer was installed 1959?
The best place to start with the age is to know when the 40 model was discontinued.
Howard
Howard

AE_Collector

AE 40's ran for about 20 years. They were introduced in either late 1938 or more likely 1939. They seem to have been produced until about 1959 or maybe even 1960 even though the replacement AE 80 was introduced in about 1955.

The receiver cap on this one looks to be either an early black painted brass band type or maybe more likely the grooved bakelite to look like a brass band. Either way, these are the very early style caps for this handset. The transmitter cap is smooth bakelite which is the much more common type produced. So which cap is original to the phone? No one knows. If it has cloth insulted wiring inside it is obviously one of the older ones. Plastic insulation is newer. One day I hope to find something that narrows down the time frame when they switched to plastic insulation. Lekely fairly soon after the war?

$35 is a decent price for this if no cracks. Too bad the caps didn't match though. The sticker would quite likely indicate iot has a SL ringer but the sticker is not a regular AE part, someone has added this. Probabaly refurbed in 1959 and sticker indicates that it is (or was then) a SL ringer.

Terry