Manufacture dates for Automatic Electric Monophones

[cloyd]

How can I determine the manufacturing date for my AE50 Monophone?  I only see series of letters and numbers.  Is it a code?
Tina Loyd

[RotoTech99]

From: RotoTech99

I wonder if the date code could be based partly on the 26 letter alphabet,  which uses 1 to 26 to designate each letter... e.g.: 25 is "Y", 7 is "G"...

[HarrySmith]

Our own member, A E Collector has been trying to break the AE codes for quite some time. He has probably added you codes to his spreadsheets but I doubt it will get solved anytime soon!

[G-Man]

How can I determine the manufacturing date for my AE50 Monophone?  I only see series of letters and numbers.  Is it a code?
Tina Loyd

There have been numerous threads on this topic on nearly all of the major telephone collecting listserves and despite the valiant efforts of Terry Biddlecomb (AECollector) on this site, as of this date no one has been able to decipher the codes.
Unfortunately unlike Western Electric, Automatic Electric was not known for stamping easy to interpret date codes on their products.

[AE_Collector]

AE didn't put dates on very many of their phones from this time frame with the exception of some made for the military. It was the late 50's before dates began to appear on the newer 80 and 90 series of phones from AE.

The codes on the back of 50's and the base of 40's represent how the phone was equiped. My project is to determine when some options became available and when various components were redesigned or changed in order to narrow down the manufacture date of any particular phone.

The AE 50 in question here appears to be a fairly old example so it is likely from the early portion of the production timeline of approximately 1940 to the late 1950's.

Terry

[cloyd]

Thank you for the information.  I hope the photos can be of some use to you in your project.  Have you published the information that you have thus far?  You said that the stamp on the back of my 50 related to how the phone was equipped.  Can you translate that part for me?

Thank you,
Tina Loyd

[Jack Ryan]

As far as I am aware, no AE documentation has surfaced that would enable the codes to be interpreted. There are also different codes - your phone is a model 50 AE 50 (the code starts with 50) which has the older, larger ringer. Aside from the model, decoding these numbers is (for me) guesswork. The code used on the later model 51 AE 50 (the code starts with 51) is a *bit* clearer as the dial and ringer can be decoded. These comments also apply to the models 40 and 41 AE 40s and AE 47s.

I have not found any suggestion of a date embedded in the codes.

This is just what I have surmised; it is not from the horse's mouth nor is it complete.

Jack
E&OE