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Pair of 302's matching dates

Started by wds, November 12, 2015, 06:09:18 PM

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wds

Picked up these two 302's from ebay mainly for the cloth cords.  Took them apart, and the plastic one is dated 1946 with all the dates beginning with an S.  Does anyone know what the S stands for?  Even the cord restraints are dated 46.  The shell has shrunk and the dial did not want to come out, so I decided not to force it.

The metal one is dated 1940-1 including the cord restraints.  The metal one is in pretty good shape so I guess that one goes on the shelf.  Since the plastic one has shrunk so much I'll use it for parts. 
Dave

wds

#1
Pictures of the metal one.
Dave

unbeldi

Quote from: wds on November 12, 2015, 06:09:18 PM
Took them apart, and the plastic one is dated 1946 with all the dates beginning with an S.  Does anyone know what the S stands for?  Even the cord restraints are dated 46.  The shell has shrunk and the dial did not want to come out, so I decided not to force it.

Original cords are always nice on a phone.

I do have a theory about the S– prefix.  We discussed it here.  By observations, this type of marking was restricted to 1945, 46, and 47.  WECo bought a factory in St. Paul, MN in 1944 and used it to restart 302 manufacturing after the War Production Board permitted it.  The only prefixes found on these date stamps are S– and H–.  The material modifications, –A (aluminum) and –I (unknown, but I have an idea), are suffixes.
The H– prefixes appear about a year after S–.  I think by that time 302 manufacturing had also resumed at Hawthorne near Chicago.
Did they mark the sets S–t.Paul and H–awthorne?

wds

Here's a picture of the shell from the plastic phone - also has the "S" marking.
Dave

wds

Back of the dial marked "S"
Dave

unbeldi

Thanks!

Indeed whenever the "S" prefix is present, it seems to always occur on all parts.
I believe the same is true for H, but I haven't found any examples of it myself.

My theory is that consumer telephone production was consolidated from St. Paul and Hawthorne in 1948 when the new plant in Indianapolis opened, and therefore the prefixes were no longer needed.  Indianapolis was build for consumer telephones, but mainly for the production of the new 500 sets that were in planning and field testing at the time.