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New to me AE 182's

Started by stub, October 03, 2010, 02:16:07 AM

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stub

Hi everybody,
                    I finally won some new to me phones.  AE 182's with a ac cord for the dial that lights up or glows.
                     Here are the e-bay pics.
                    I will post more pics when the phones get here.    stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

Dan

They look like the princess' ugly sister, the one who wears square glasses....
"Imagine how weird telephones would look if our ears weren't so close to our mouths." - Steven Wright

Dennis Markham

I have six or seven of the older Starlites.  I like their look.  I only have one of them with the AC cord and it works very well.  They are more difficult to find.  A couple of years ago a collector at the Mason, MI phone show had a snow white one for sale for $90.  It went quickly.

AE_Collector

#3
Quote from: Dan on October 03, 2010, 08:42:54 AM
They look like the princess' ugly sister, the one who wears square glasses....

That is a common response from non AE folks to the AE Starlite. They aren't quite as small and gracefull as the Princess phone but I have a hard time considering them remotely close to ugly.

My Stock reponse is "at least AE didn't just get a license and copy the Princess phone but rather they designed their own unique version from the ground up".

The Starlite had much better light distribution on the dial than the Princess. The number plate glows from the back evenly unlike the regular light bulb on one side of the Princess dial. GTE Sylvania was involved in the developement of electroluminescence in the late 50's and put it to use in the Starlite phone.

Terry

jsowers

Here's a shot I took of my pink Starlite with its electroluminescent dial all lit up. Forgive the blurry focus, but the light had to be dim in order to get a picture of it.
Jonathan

Adam

That's sweet.  Anybody know why AE stopped making them that way?
Adam Forrest
Los Angeles Telephone - A proud part of the global C*Net System
C*Net 1-383-4820

AE_Collector

#6
I suspect that they had no end of troubles with electrical authorities. The original sets like Harry's had 120VAC right into the base AND the base was metal. There were current limiting resistors in the base but that wouldn't matter once the phone slid off the edge of the bathtub and landed in the bath tub with you.

So they quickly redesigned them so that the current limiting resistors were in a wall plug and the installer wired to the tel set block where the already current limited 120VAC went into the phone in a 4th & 5th conductor of the set cord. Here in Canada they had to make the set cord heavier stranded conductors but it doesn't appear that they had to do that for US Starlite phones.

I don't know if they continued to have problems with the authorities after this change as this arrangement carried on for quite awhile but once they began making Touch Call versions of the 182 Starlite they dropped the illumination all together.

Terry

bingster

Wow, that's quite a nice light show.  I had never seen one lit up before now.
= DARRIN =



stub

#8
Hi everybody,
                     I got the 182's in and the blue one had to be sanded to make it forget not blue again, pic looks blue but it's really ugly green. Plastic base is sanded and I cleaned up the base of the phone . I'll do the handset later.
                     The electroluminescent dial would not work so I took it apart and fixed it and now it works fine. I had another green one that wouldn't light up so I fixed it too. I think I can repair most of these if the the electroluminescent dial ring is not broken, most of the problems I have seen from these are loose connections at base where the wires are pluged. I'll post how later when I see how long the repair last!!
                      I'll post pics when I get done .  Keep all your phones ringing!
                                                                                                  stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

stub

            Here 's one of three  repaired 182 electroluminescent dial lights. 
              stub
Kenneth Stubblefield

stub

Terry,
           Thanks again.    stub
Kenneth Stubblefield


dsk

Starlite telephones with glowing dials are hypnotizing me  :D
So far, I have not seen any wall Starlites with glowing dials.
My only Starlite is a black wall model 1974 without glowing dial.

I would like to have a glowing dial on that one, any Ideas of what solution I could consider.

I don't want to buy something I cant use, and shipping to Norway is $40-50 for one Starlite.

I will be happy for any Ideas to solve this.

Regards

dsk

AE_Collector

You can put the dial from a desk starlite into a wall starlite. Some early wall starlite's had illuminatIng dials but not too often.

Terry

GG



Nice work.

Yes a kitchen wall Starlite with electroluminescent dial would be a great idea.  Make it easy to find the phone in the dark.

Agreed, the early versions could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Has anyone ever determined if the blue light spectrum from those includes enough UV to be a risk of yellowing whatever handset is hung up across them?