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What do I have here?

Started by Bill, February 27, 2011, 11:53:38 AM

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Bill

I pulled a box out of storage the other day, and among the other things I found, there was a phone. It looks like an ordinary 500 set, but with some differences.

The shell looks like a 500 shell, and under the finger-grip area is the expected Western Electric logo with the bell in a circle. I turned it over to find the printing on the base – and the base is plastic. There is no printing anywhere on the base. However, there is a glued-on paper label saying "CEAC Inc". A little Googling shows that Communications Equipment And Contracting (CEAC) was bought by Union Springs (Alabama) Telephone Company in 1963, and in 1967, the company boasted "All telephones installed were brand new units (not rebuilt) - a first for the entire telephone industry." See http://www.ustconline.net/about/history.html

The inside looks pretty ordinary, though again there is no printing anywhere. The shell is not quite the same color as the dial, suggesting that one or the other was replaced at some time. There is a bit of spray paint on the hookswitch plungers, but the inside of the shell is the same color as the outside, and there are no obvious signs of painting. Perhaps the paint came from a not-quite-dry repainted handset. The handset does show signs of having been painted, and the inside of the earpiece cover is pink!

The cords are strange. In the base, both the line cord and the handset cord are held down with little plastic clips, apparently because the openings in the shell are way too big at both locations. And at the handset, the cord again fails to fit, even though it has an oversize sleeve on it, and so it is mechanically attached somehow inside the handset.

So if CEAC and USTC installed only brand new units (not rebuilt), what is this?

Bill

JorgeAmely

Let the truth speak for itself.  ;D
Jorge

Dan

It's a first in the telephone industry, a HYBRID 500 ;)
"Imagine how weird telephones would look if our ears weren't so close to our mouths." - Steven Wright

rdelius

There used to be a telephone refurbisher in Sanford NC called Suntel I believe. They took old 500 sets of mixed manufactures ,removed the guts from the old baseplates and riveted the parts to new plastic bases. plastics were buffed or painted and many sets were converted to 2500 sets with new shells. This was late 1980s
Robby
They also rebuilt single slot pay stations

Greg G.

Quote from: rdelius on February 27, 2011, 07:15:12 PM
There used to be a telephone refurbisher in Sanford NC called Suntel I believe. They took old 500 sets of mixed manufactures ,removed the guts from the old baseplates and riveted the parts to new plastic bases. plastics were buffed or painted and many sets were converted to 2500 sets with new shells. This was late 1980s
Robby
They also rebuilt single slot pay stations

Well, at least they didn't make lamps out of them!
The idea that a four-year degree is the only path to worthwhile knowledge is insane.
- Mike Row
e

GG



Yeah that baseplate is truly odd.   For a while ITT made 2500s with plastic bases; I have one.  But the ITT version looks nothing like what's on your phone.

So whatever that telco said about issuing only new phones, not refurbed, sounds like they were fibbing.  Or someone stretched the definition of "new" to mean "new baseplate with whatever parts we could find." 

Anyway, an interesting piece of history, if for no other reason than it showed how this stuff was recycled again and again and again. 

AE_Collector

Quote from: Bill on February 27, 2011, 11:53:38 AMin 1967, the company boasted “All telephones installed were brand new units (not rebuilt) - a first for the entire telephone industry.”

That wouldn't work now with a more a more environmental outlook on things . "We take all recovered telephone sets and toss them in the big hole out back of our company head office so that you can have a brand new unit installed each time that we send an installer to your house".

Of course these days everyone does just go by another phone at the first sign of trouble and I'm sure that a large number of them go straight into the garbage rather than electronic recycling.

Terry

dsk

I think this picture is from 1983:
dsk