nead help in identifying my new find

[linesman]

Hello everyone. I just picked up a unique rotary phone that I can't identify and hope that the community hear can help me out. I believe that it is a northern electric phone used by a switchboard operator based on the plug, but other that I am lost. Has anyone else seen anything like this before?

[HarrySmith]

Welcome to the forum!!
I can't identify your phone but it appears to have an AE dial and a WE F-1 handset.

[unbeldi]

Hello everyone. I just picked up a unique rotary phone that I can't identify and hope that the community hear can help me out. I believe that it is a northern electric phone used by a switchboard operator based on the plug, but other that I am lost. Has anyone else seen anything like this before?

Where does one find such a unique design?
Are the internal components Northern Electric? How about the handset? Is that marked Northern?
The dial certainly is AE.
Does the inside indicate factory-quality manufacturing?

[linesman]

I found this unit at a knick nack shop and just had to have it. Yes the dial is an ae x83, pretty sure it needs to be cleaned because the dial turns but won't return on its own.  The hand set is marked as a northern electric but that is the only manufacturers markings I can find on it. There is not much on the inside other than what looks like a battery, a capacitor and a couple of what looks like hand wired boards.

[unbeldi]

Looking at the internals, it appears and confirms this was not a factory produced set. The solder connections, the metal brackets to hold the boards, arrangement of components, all look like a one-off item made by a hobbyist or specialties design shop.  I think the outside already provided that suggestion.

[TelePlay]

Could that be a HAM radio work up of some sort to allow telephony over the air?

[unbeldi]

Could that be a HAM radio work up of some sort to allow telephony over the air?

Quite possibly...   The bantam plug suggests connection to some kind of audio equipment.

[TelePlay]

Yeah, I was thinking, once contact is made over the air with another HAM in the desired area, that HAM could connect his rig to a land line with a similar device and allow the distant HAM to dial a local number to get long distance phone service, even on a foreign system, to a known phone number. Some of the electronic stuff inside looks like trimmers, chokes and other stuff they may have been needed to optimize the land line connection. There have to be some HAMs on the forum who can verify or refute this possibility.

[unbeldi]

the Blue Box of HAM.

[paul-f]

Do an internet search for "phone patch."

Amateur radio operators have been connecting to phone lines for longer than I can remember.

  http://www.arrl.org/phone-patch-guidelines

[K1WI]

   Don't think it is a phone patch ,noticed the receive and transmit jacks but very unusual to have a dial on a phone patch.  And all the phone patches I've ever had only one had a touch tone dial.    I do remember seeing a similar unit (and it was also blue) , might have been made by CMC that was used installers of switching equipment , some times referred to as a "telephone buzzer" it was used to check continuity , and talk , over a moderate distance like between floors of a central office.  I did a quick scan of several ham radio on line flea markets and there were several pathesup for sale ,(mostly Heathkits) and none with dials.

       de K1WI  73

[linesman]

I would like to thank everyone for there input. It mostly conferms what I suspected, but I didint think of the HAM angle. what ever the true function it should make for an intresting part of a non standard phone colection.

[paul-f]

It could be that phone patches have evolved since the 1950s and 60s. 

One of my first projects after getting my ticket in the mid 1960s was building a phone patch around a rotary dial I picked up at a hamfest.  I can't believe I was the only one.  In those days, telephone parts were hard to find and were usually traded "under the table." Most were wary of the phone police.  It was rare to have a spare phone to use in the shack.

Years later, I replaced it with a commercial device that had no dial.