What is the oldest date for 564/565?

[Adam]

I mostly collect Western Electric 500/2500 series phones and 5 series key sets.  We know the "holy grail" of 500's is 1949, with 1950 the most popular year to find.

What is the hardest year to find for a Western Electric 564 or 565 6-button key set?  What about the 4-button 544's?  What years did all these come out?

In my collection, I have a black 544B dated 8-60 and a black 564H dated 5-57 (currently in my Avatar).

[Jim Stettler]

An off-the cuff guess is around 1953. I think that is when they started showing up in bsp's. You can cheeck Remco's site, to maybe determine the date.
Pay attention to the date and issue #. I have seen phones predate issue 1 of a bsp, by up to about a year or so.
Good luck,
Jim

[baldopeacock]

Masstel, had you joined the forum yet when Dan/Panther found the 1948 500 field test phone?   If not, you'll enjoy the story.   http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=2394.0

There's a '49 500 production model in a Seattle museum... one of the guys here was able to get his hands on it and take lots of pics.
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=2689.0


Lots of reading here.

[Adam]

No, I joined after, but I have definitely caught up on those discussions!    That's why I'm interested now about how the 500-series key sets fit into the story.

Here's a pic, by the way, of my 564H dated 5-57.  I added the open-face dial finger wheel because I think they're neat.  I don't believe they would have been issued that way.  But I changed the finger-wheel only, everything else is original.

[paul-f]

Events in Telecommunications History (AT&T) dates the 565 announcement as March 1, 1955.  Production would have been going for several months.

[jsowers]

I was thinking along the same time frame as Paul mentioned. I searched my old bookmarks--they don't work any longer, but the description I inserted and date are there--and the year 1955 was the earliest for a 565 keyset. It's also the earliest I've seen them in ads. Below is an ad that may have been very late 1954 or early 1955, New Look for an Old Friend. It pictures a six-button keyset. I zoomed in on the keyset. They did have black metal fingerwheels, like all black 500 series phones except the 500 H, P and U night-light phones.

Also note the mention of spring cords being an option. And that's a great red two-tone. The practice of routing the handset cords behind the phone, except for the spring cord picture, is curious and odd. They did that in other advertising too.

One more interesting keyset thing... the movie High Society from 1956 has black straight cord keysets installed in Tracy Lord's house all over the place. Frank Sinatra plays a magazine reporter who says "they are lousy with phones" (meaning they're everywhere, not that the phones are lousy). He picks up the phone and pushes one of the buttons and her mother answers. He says "This is the Voice of Doom!" She thinks the servants have been at the cooking Sherry again.

[HarrySmith]

Why is it in those pictures the straight handset cords do not go in the mousehole on the side of the phones?

[Kenny C]

I was fixing to ask that it's weird

[Phonesrfun]

Why is it in those pictures the straight handset cords do not go in the mousehole on the side of the phones?

I suspect that somewhere along the way, the marketing folks took stock photos and probably thought the cord going into the side of the phone was too distracting and just used some creativity in how they showed the phone.  In practice, the 500 family of phones never had the handset cord going out the back.  Never.

So, I further suspect that whenever Western did a new promo piece, they just reached for stock photos rather than doing new photo shoots for every ad.  Using stock photos would certainly keep the cost down.

All of this, mind you, is my own 2 cents