Prototype Western Electric Single Slot photo

[kleenax]

Can't remember if I ever posted this photo, so I thought I would share.

It was in Paul Vaverchak's collection; now in Mike Davis'.



Unfortunately, the internals were totally missing; NOTHING was left inside. I just have to wonder if this was on purpose by Western Electric, or?

[Key2871]

I would say yes, they probably were. I've come across demo items that had no internal part's. Most likely so some one wouldn't or couldn't connect the device to the network.

Well that's to bad, it would have been cool to see them. And how they worked.
I wonder did it have the standard coin gauge and something inside that funneled the coins into the gauge, to select areas? Or was it one specifically designed to go in that phone.
We may never know...

[compubit]

That's one giant coin return lever - if I read it correctly, you'd have to pull the lever all the way down for it to function...

Which brings me to the "no innards" thoughts: I wonder if this could have been an externa design prototype to gauge user reaction (like we do with software code:create a dummy interface to gather user comments before we code the "innards" of the application).

Jim

[kleenax]

What I found especially interesting was that it was simply a special upper housing fitted to a conventional 197G (as I recall) back & bottom housing.  If it would have worked, that would have surely saved a LOT of money in tooling on making the HUGE single-slots that the 1C1 became.

[Key2871]

That brings to mind didn't they go away from the three slot  design, because it was fairly easy to slip a large screw driver between the upper and lower housing, and get the top off.
Thus exposing the phone to theft of service and or coin theft, by breaking the hopper off.
That's just something that came to mind from a conversation I had with Paul, many years ago.
Because we were talking about the three slot, and then how it transitioned to the single slot. And the extra security "lock" that needed something rather simple, but strangely complex, the "T" key. Because the added lock that used the "Bell key" wasn't really keeping the upper housing secure all the time.