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Please identify these handsets

Started by cloyd, June 16, 2015, 04:17:31 PM

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cloyd

Found these handsets at the flea market Saturday and I need help identifying them.  Do any of them have any value?

Thank you for the help,
Tina Loyd

Pic #1,2 no identifying labels
Pic #3,4 RCA Manufacturing Co. Inc., Camden, N.J. U.S.A.
             MI-2040-A
             TYPE-L SERIAL 9553
Pic #5,6
             Shure Brothers Inc., Chicago, ILL USA
-- I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. - Van Gogh -- 1885

dsk

 :) The 2 last pictures are (as far as I can see) ARMY-NAVY HANSET H-33/PT

dsk

G-Man

Shure-   Handset for Vietnam era PRC-series and other military radios.
RCA-   Sound- powered handset typically used aboard ships.
Handsethook-   WWI era Kellogg Model A Camp Field Telephone... The set was also manufactured by Western Electric using their own handset.

G-Man

#3
Further-

The clip on the Shure Bros. handset was for hanging it from the soldier's body webbing and the shape was chosen so it could be slipped between the helmet and ear during combat.
   
"Model: Handset H-33/PT H-33/PT - MILITARY U.S. different makers
Handset for PRC-10, RT-671/PRC-47, SEM-25/35 and many other field radios.
Coiled cord (1.5 meters) ending in a straight U-77/U connector."

G-Man

Here is an eBay auction for a Western Electric WWI Model A 1917 FIELD TELEPHONE with a Kellogg handset

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1917-US-ARMY-WWI-FIELD-TELEPHONE-MODEL-A-/141679423675?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20fcc070bb

Don't get too excited about the price since it is vastly inflated. The seller is delusional and these sets are common enough that other sets in even better condition were given away at TCI shows.   

andre_janew

I had no idea they had field telephones in WWI.  I didn't think field telephones existed until WWII.

paul-f

Quote from: andre_janew on June 17, 2015, 04:20:00 PM
I had no idea they had field telephones in WWI.  I didn't think field telephones existed until WWII.

Even earlier.  The military was an early adopter.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_telephone

"Shortly after the invention of the telephone attempts were made to adapt the technology for military use. Telephones were already being used to support military campaigns in British India and in British colonies in Africa in the late 1870s and early 1880s."
Visit: paul-f.com         WE  500  Design_Line

.

TelePlay

Quote from: andre_janew on June 17, 2015, 04:20:00 PM
I had no idea they had field telephones in WWI.  I didn't think field telephones existed until WWII.

Yes, they did and here's a "quick search" interesting overview of all communications back then.

http://on.wsj.com/1nFp0VP

The following is the text from that link in case the link goes bad some day.

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Telephones and the telegraph were the most used form of telecommunications, both by civilians and by the military, when World War I was declared. Both were refined and made more secure during the conflict, while radio communication took great leaps forward. Ultimately, technologies developed for use on the front would lead to the creation of broadcast radio in the 1920s.

At the outbreak of war, the British military was using telegraphs for long-distance communications and telephones at the front. One invention was secure telephone lines: Early telephones simply used a wire in the ground, but for field telephones it was straightforward for the enemy to tap into the wire and listen to the opponents' plans.

Invented by Capt. Algernon Clement Fuller in 1913, the "Fullerphone" used a low-voltage line, making signals harder to pick up, and employed telephone sets that chopped up the signal by turning it off and on at synchronized times.

This made it almost impossible to tap the signal and the military continued to use the technology in World War II.

One particular form of telecommunications that was finessed during World War I was radio, with essential technologies developed for the air war.

"World War I perfected radio telephony, particularly in relation to aircraft and artillery spotting," said Elizabeth Bruton, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Leeds in England.

At the outbreak of war, aircraft were little more than "box kites with engines" and were mainly used at first for artillery spotting. This was because heavy artillery could fire further than soldiers could see. Planes had no form of communication other than tilting their wings, waving a flag or dropping a paper message to tell military staff on the ground where shells were landing, a process Dr. Bruton compares to "playing darts with a blindfold on."

Wireless telegraphy—sending morse-code signals through the air rather than by wire—was an embryonic technology that had been invented about 15 years prior to the outbreak of war.

It relied on a heavy operating machine with a spark-gap transmitter, which needed a live spark to generate electromagnetic waves to send signals, so it wasn't practical for a tiny biplane full of combustible fuel.

It was the industrial production of radio valves that changed this. In 1916, the Royal Flying Corps started developing radio telephony sets, which meant that planes could tell ground stations where shells were landing. This was still in its embryonic stage as it was a one-way signal—those manning the ground station, for instance, would raise a flag to show they could hear.

By 1918, the British had mastered plane-to-plane radio communication—unthinkable a few years earlier. After the war, this first generation of radio operators became the roots of the amateur radio movement—which would lead to broadcast radio.

The telegram also played a crucial part in the war, a factor which led the British to destroy German undersea telegraph cables soon after the war started, forcing Germany to use less secure wireless telegraphy.

In January 1917, the U.K. intercepted the Zimmermann Telegram, a crucial moment in the war which would bring the U.S. into the conflict. German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent a message to Germany's ambassador in the U.S. for transmission to Mexico, outlining plans to attack shipping lanes to the U.K., with the desire to ally with Mexico and have it seize territory in the U.S.

The U.K. intercepted the telegram through the reportedly neutral cables of Denmark and Sweden—and had to conceal that it did so.

From Edward Snowden to Google, techniques in the field of telecommunications invented and popularized 100 years ago still have huge resonance today.


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