How were dial cards made and deployed?

[savageje]

This may sound like a strange topic and it may have been addressed here before, but I've just gotten into collecting and restoring old rotary phones.   I am fascinated by the wide variety of dial cards that I have seen in unrestored WE phones made for the Bell System.  I guess that I am surprised by the variety given that the Bell System seemed to emphasize standardization throughout the RBOCs in even the most minor details.  

Those most common types of dial cards that I've seen look like the numbers were stamped on, others look like they were pre-printed, and still others look like the numbers were individually positioned behind a plastic window in a cardboard cutout.  Some are very neat and others are made very sloppily with crooked numbers, etc.  Others have no numbers on them at all.  This variety makes collecting more interesting, but I am still curious about how the dial cards were made, chosen, and deployed by the phone companies.  I often see restored phones for sale with a Bell System logo dial card in them, but my intuition tells me that not many phones were actually installed with such a card. Was it up to the customer to decide which dial card to use?  Did the technician installing service choose them?  

Thanks in advance for sharing info with a novice.

[Phonesrfun]

Welcome to the forum!

I only really know the answer to your last question.  The customer had absolutely nothing to say about the dial card.  It was probably not up to the installer either.  The installer had a bunch of preprinted cards with the prefix on them, and later on both the area code and the prefix.  They carried a numbering stamp machine to put the last four numbers on the card before installing it in the dial.

The choice of the card was up to the individual telephone company itself.  Card styles changed from time to time, and the ones with the slogans on them like "Wait for Dial Tone" eventually got phased out in the interest of I suppose, simplification.  Remember too, that in addition to the Bell system, there were many, many independant telephone companies over the years.

Also, often times people would figure out how to get the card out and hand write their own numbers in.  This was usually done if they had a bootlegged phone, and they wanted to not show its original number.  One could just take the card out; turn it over, and hand-write your own number.

To my knowledge no phone company ever used the Bell System logo as their number card.  It is purely a creation of the Internet, computers, Photoshop, and a good printer.  Besides, putting the logo on like that kind of did away with the idea of it being a "number card".

some collectors collect phone number cards, and thus others might know a little more about the number card paractices of the various phone companies over the years.

-Bill

[bingster]

The Bell System installers carried a number stamping kit and a strip of blank number cards.  When a phone was placed in service, the installer got his kit out and went to work.  The stamper came in a little box, the lid of which was important to the finished product.  The strip of number cards would be placed in a special recess in the lid, and the stamper would be placed in the same recess.  This kept everything straight.  Each strip had marks on it to use in positioning the stamper from left to right.  When it was all set, the installer gave the stamper a whack, stamping one card on the strip.  The number card was then punched out of the strip and installed on the phone.  

Here's the BSP for the stamping process for round cards: http://xy3.com/bsp/pdf/080-118-101.pdf

By the way, welcome to the forum!

[savageje]

Thanks for the information and welcoming me to the forum.  I appreciate knowing a bit of the history, as it increases my enjoyment of my collection.  I have found that these old rotary phones are great conversation pieces, and I like to be able to share them with others.

[Dennis Markham]

Savageje welcome to our Forum.  Glad that you logged in and hope to see you here often.

Here's a great web page of dial cards.  They are listed by phone type, manufacturer, region and many collector's collections are displayed.  I think you'll enjoy see them.

http://www.telephonearchive.com/numbercards/index.html

There is also a site where one can check for a certain exchange or add their exchange name to the data base.  It is:

http://rcrowe.brinkster.net/tensearch.aspx

It takes a while to load, even with high speed internet.

[Dan/Panther]

Thousands of dial card variation out there, not to mention the computer generated home mades.
D/P

[AET]

I was curious how this worked myself.  Very informative!

[ntophones]

Welcome to the forum! Especially with such an interesting topic! Very informative!
--nto

[JimH]

Here's the BSP for the stamping process for round cards: http://xy3.com/bsp/pdf/080-118-101.pdf

By the way, welcome to the forum!

Bingster, thank for that BSP PDF!  I recently bought this exact numbering machine, and I do have some blank cards.  It's been trial and error to get the alignment right, and this will help me print like a pro!

I recall the telephone man replaced my grandmother's 1949 302 with a new black 500 in 1974.  He took the old "black with a rectangular label" number card out of the 302 and put it right in the new 500.  I took it out in 1981 when she died, and I have it in one of my 302s.  I also recall that when I was a kid and we had new Trimlines installed, the phone man didn't have new cards made up, and he hand wrote our phone number on the number cards.  I thought it didn't look professional.