My first Craigslist purchase..

[Everwood]

Looked on Craigslist for the first time last night.  Found an extremely vague description of "old wall phone, was my grandfathers"    I asked what year.. he replied 1901.  I drove the hour and 15 minutes down to check it out.  Here is what I came home with for $85 (asked $100).  Hope I didn't get hosed... seems legit.

I could use some help, I am only about a week into these vintage phones.  Is this something to restore or leave all the webs and dust?  I don't want to touch her until I get some idea.. thanks for any info on this. 

[LarryInMichigan]

Everwood,

It looks great to me, and I think that you got a good deal.  I am for cleaning it and carefully adapting it to make it work.  I did that with mine (http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=1623).  Visitors to my house are impressed when they find out that it is actually a working phone and when they hear the ringer.  A few have dialed my number from their mobile phones while in my kitchen so that they could hear it ring.

Larry

[Doug Rose]

Everwood....it is the real deal. Clean it up and display a phone that is over 100 years old.


Larry ...I agree with half of your assessment. The phone is the real deal, but they were not meant to work with dial tone. Hooking a magneto phone to your local telco is an issue and not advised. I strongly feel that a 100 year old antique phone should not be "modernized." Adding later parts from later issue phones to make it work; I think ruins a phone. It should be left as is. I have an 1898 WE Cathedral in my Kitchen, looks like the day it rolled out of the factory. I crank the handle and my guests hear the bells ring. That is how the phone should be, in my humble opinion. "Does it work?" No, it was not meant to work on today's phone lines.

All....Yes, I would rather leave a phone, be it a 302 or a B1 with all the original parts in a non-working state, than add a ringer of receiver elements from different years to make it work. Either way its still going to sit on my shelf and not be in use. The B1 I just fixed up that I got on eBay last week, I didn't see if it works, its all original except the leather cover. No one will touch this but me.

I do have working antiques phones, but my best phones sit on a shelf and get the pedestal treatment. I cannot tell you if my Blue 302 works or not, doesn't matter to me. Its not to be touched by anyone but me.

If you want a phone to work on your modern lines, SO be it; add what you need to make it work. For the collector, I want my phone as original as possible. Again, just my opinion.

This is not meant to be a lecture, although it probably sounds it. I am very passionate about this! I hate little chirpy ringers added to B1s and those pulse to tone converters. An old phone should be what it is, an old phone. I will now step down from my soapbox...Doug

[LarryInMichigan]

I understand that the phone was not meant to be connected a modern phone line, so the magneto needs to be removed from the circuit.  Being an engineer by profession though, I like things to actually work, and there are plenty of parts in these which can actually work if adapted properly.  Care should be taken to keep everything as original as possible and modifications should be easily reversible.  Cutting holes, gutting the insides, and installing warblers are not things to do.  Different people have different opinions. 

Larry

[dsk]

Hi, I think this article tells a lot of how to use it without any changes.
http://tinyurl.com/6b4mgp4

It may even be improved with a better line transformer and it will be ringing too.

The best is, you don't have to change the circuit.

dsk

[Bill]

Two years ago, there was a lot of discussion on a very similar topic here
http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=882.0
I was interested primarily because I got a WE 40AL (dial-less, of course) with a 315H local battery subset. I'm an electrical engineer, so I figured if I could study the circuit, I could figure out how to "move a wire, add a jumper" and make it work on the modern phone line with minimal changes.

It was not to be. After a lot of hours of drawing and tracing diagrams, there turned out not to be a good way to accomplish this. It could be done, but with so many changes that the originality was lost.

As D_S_K noted, there is a different approach that will work nicely. This approach requires you to make only a few changes, because it basically bypasses most of the common-battery circuit, and replaces it with new external circuitry. Nothing wrong with this, since it is easily removed to return the phone to original condition - but I chose not to do it.

Bill

[dsk]

About 1920 just after the war, and with lack of all materials the local telephone company choosed to adapt some local battery telephones for use on the new W.E. exchange.

They put the dial direct on the line, they putted in a capacitor in series with the ringer. They kept the local battery, and they instructed the telephone man to hardwire the polarity to be working the same way as the fixed polarity of the receiver.  I do not know how long these were in service, but my guess is not more than 15 years.

This were lo risk installations in a modern 1920 home. The telephone was normally put in protected areas far away from any grounded conductor, pipe or ......

Today you may easily touch ground and metal part of the phone at the same time, you will have a small risk of getting electric current flow through the human body.  The circuit in the document over will prevent that risk.

Using a Standard Repeating Coil (Bell 93-series?) Us army field exchange BD71 and BD72 had a usable phantom transformer  etc. Instead of the little transformer documented, and a capacitor of e.g. 1 microfarad across the relay contacts.... and the phone will ring.  (Still a good idea to short out the generator).

Probably some "old" phone person here to give better hints of an available transformer.

dsk

[Phonesrfun]

I have access to a paper (booklet) just written by Colin Chambers which I contributed some effort to the work.

It describes how to construct a circuit to hook a local battery phone, such as a magneto wood wall phone, without changing the circuitry of the old phone, and thus preserving its historic value.

The paper is just being finished by Colin, and I think he plans on it being in the public domain, and so when it is ready in pdf format, I can make it available to anyone who would like it.

-Bill

[Jim Stettler]

I have access to a paper (booklet) just written by Colin Chambers which I contributed some effort to the work.

It describes how to construct a circuit to hook a local battery phone, such as a magneto wood wall phone, without changing the circuitry of the old phone, and thus preserving its historic value.

The paper is just being finished by Colin, and I think he plans on it being in the public domain, and so when it is ready in pdf format, I can make it available to anyone who would like it.

-Bill

Colin has some other  simple projects on his site as well.
http://oldphoneguy.net/ ( dead link 03-18-22 )

Jim

[Everwood]

Thanks guys for your input.  There seems to be a wiring issue as the bells do not ring when the magneto is cranked.  Magneto is putting out ~90VAC.  I used a piece of standard jumper wire to temp hard wire the bell to the magneto and the bells do ring.  I am very hesitant to touch the wiring due to the age and originality.  Is it "safe" to directly hard wire the bells for the sake of show and display?  Should I be concerned about something shorting out by bypassing the switch-hook?  Thanks again for all your help.

[Wallphone]

Some phones don't ring when cranked if the receiver is off the hook and some phones don't ring at all even though the magneto is producing current to Tip & Ring. It all depends on how they were wired. So go ahead and wire it however you want to get your ringer going. That's a nice looking phone for a good price.

[Phonesrfun]

Most wood wallphones do not ring their own bell when cranked.  The switch in the magneto is designed to take the ringer out of the circuit when cranking is taking place.  Some did, but most did not.

The reason for this is that you wanted all the ringing current to go out on the line to ring the other phones on the line, as there could be many.  The local ringer would only suck that much more current off the rest of the line. 


I think the fact that movies have the phone ringing when cranked leads people to believe they all did that.

[Wallphone]

With the four wooden wall phones that I have, the bells will ring when cranked as long as the receiver is on the hook. Actually the the switch contacts on the magneto are there to disconnect the magneto from the circuit and shunt the windings in the magneto when it is not in use so no voice current is lost through the magneto windings. The ringer in always in the circuit unless the switch hook is in the off hook position. I would think that you would want to hear your own phone ring so that when you are ringing the operator (ring off) to tell her that you are finished with your call, that you would be able to hear that you did it right. The magneto has more than enough power for two ringers, or ten people in series if you can find ten volunteers (suckers).

[wds]

That phone seems identical to the Kellogg Wood Wall phone.  To get the ringer to work, lift the hook switch just slightly.  When the receiver is on the hook, all the current goes down the line.  Lifting the receiver a little, but not all the way will (should) allow the ringer to ring while cranking the magneto.

[Phonesrfun]

With the four wooden wall phones that I have, the bells will ring when cranked as long as the receiver is on the hook. Actually the the switch contacts on the magneto are there to disconnect the magneto from the circuit and shunt the windings in the magneto when it is not in use so no voice current is lost through the magneto windings. The ringer in always in the circuit unless the switch hook is in the off hook position. I would think that you would want to hear your own phone ring so that when you are ringing the operator (ring off) to tell her that you are finished with your call, that you would be able to hear that you did it right. The magneto has more than enough power for two ringers, or ten people in series if you can find ten volunteers (suckers).

You know, once again I have to say I stand corrected.  Doug, you are absolutely correct, at least when it comes to my WE 317.  I had not seen your post from Feb 19th, but when this topic came up again today I reviewed it and I saw your post.  I went back and looked at the schematic, and the ringer is in series when ringing.  To prove that you were correct, I connected another phone to the line posts of the wall phone to put a ringer in the circuit.  Sure enough, it rang.  You were correct.  I guess that's why they call you Wallphone.

Everwood:  Try to connect another phone to the wood wall phone L1 and L2.  Any old phone with a working ringer.  Even a 500.  Turning the crank should ring both the 500 and the wood wall phone.

-Bill (Eating crow)