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ID'ing a 2500 based phone...

Started by twocvbloke, July 20, 2012, 01:21:58 AM

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twocvbloke

Now here's a challenge, a friend of mine is curious about what the 2500 was that his parents used in the 80's, provided by Southwestern Bell, and it's a 2-line phone with hold and indicators either side of the dial and had a switch on it, and the only picture of said phone is off videotape from the mid 80's, and degraded at that...

I've tried to clear up the picture as best I can to bring out the detail, but, I haven't the foggiest where to begin to try and work out what the variation of 2500 it is... ???

The 2nd pic is an "almost" phone, as it has the switch and indicator, but not the other bits next to the first and second row of dial buttons, and is a single-line phone, so, it kind of looks like that, but with a few more buttons... :D

poplar1

#1
Completed Ebay Item number: 270991160883

Disregard most of what the seller says (for example, that the battery bay was made in Hong Kong but the phone in US). This is not a Western Electric phone.

After the breakup of the Bell System, the baby Bells such as Southwestern Bell were not allowed to manufacture telephones, but they were allowed to label phones such as this one  with the baby Bell company name.  Some companies (NW Bell?) resold new Western Electric phones, but mostly they were imported junk.  

Bottom line, if they said "Bell" (BellSouth, SW Bell, Pac Bell, NW Bell) they weren't Bell  (Western Electric). This confusion (deception) continues today as "AT&T" corded phones are actually made by another company (Advanced American Telephones).

"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

twocvbloke

From the look of it, that phone isn't quite right, the buttons are laid out differently to my friend's old one, but I'd have to wait for him to be awake to confirm whether it's right or not... :)

twocvbloke

Yeah, that phone on ebay isn't the one, they apparently had those after the pictured phone, but it's not the pictured phone from that video frame... :-\

McHeath

I had a phone similar to these on my desk at work in the late 80's.  Two line with hold, looked like a 2500.  We bought them at Radio Shack for our new office for my dad's construction company, don't recall the price.  I remember that the bottom was plastic not metal, and that it was made in Asia someplace, Hong Kong maybe.  It was my first experience with a two line phone and a hold button, I thought I was quite the little businessman.  :D