The telephone I grew up with

[LM Ericsson]

This telephone has been in my family for many years. Its a 1981 Western Electric Trimline. This phone used to belong to my mother. My mom rented this phone in 1983 and finally bought it in 1984. Unfortunately the color is not  original. It used to be a tan color and was repainted from refurbishing in 1983. About the mark on the handset, it got there from when I was little, I knocked it off the computer desk. Im suprised the handset did not break in half. The trimline was a good quality phone!

[deedubya3800]

When I was little we had a wall Trimline in the rust orange color in the kitchen with the buttons that lit up just like yours. This was about 1981-1986 in Arkansas.

[Ed D]

When I was growing up, our kitchen phone was a black WE 354.  It hung on the wall until sometime around the late 1960s when we had a problem with it, and a service technician came out to fix it.  Well, instead of fixing it, he replaced it with a WE 554, also in black.

My parents had a black WE 500 set installed in their bedroom somewhere around 1960.  That stayed until the 1970s when it was replaced by a yellow WE Trimline.

I really missed that 354 after it was gone.  There was always something "magical" about it in my mind, as opposed to the 554.  I liked the F1 handset and the body shape better than the 554.

I managed recently to pick up a black 354 that I am going to clean and polish, and hopefully put it in my kitchen.  That'll bring back some memories!   

[gpo706]

We had a 746 red with a party line button, it was in the hallway on a telephone table with seat my dad made.

Typical GPO installations for an average house would have the phone connected to the nearest CO in line, in our case the freezing hallway.

No extensions (you had to pay the GPO for that, and rent a second phone).

All before DIY extensions and PST.

When the man from the GPO came to upgrade us from party line to our own number he swiped our 746, and for the life of me I cannot recall what bland piece of junk they replaced it with, I was just pissed off when I came home one day and "our" 746 was gone!

[GG]

IMHO the 706 and 746 are iconic designs, roughly equivalent to the 500 and AE 80 in that sense.  And as I'm sure you've seen, there are a few points of sufficient similarity between the 706 and the 80, that go beyond the coincidence level:  Ericsson Telephones Ltd. were clearly looking at the AE 80 before they settled on the design for the 706.   

[LM Ericsson]

It sure makes us wonder where the telephones go after they were replaced! My grandfather has a avacado green 554 in his kitchen. He bought his house in '75. The handset has a circle around the plug which tells me that it was converted to modular in 1975. He says that when he moves out, he is going to give me that telephone.