Illinois Telephone & Telegraph Ad

[Fabius]

Came across this ad with the AE c/s. Notice the switch. on the left you can see the A cutout but on the right there appears to be a round disk with screw covering it. Strange.

Illinois T&T served Chicago was bought out by AT&T.

[unbeldi]

I've seen this ad before too.  I think it likely came from "The Chicago Daily News".
There are scans of their almanacs or year books on Google Books.

A higher resolution of this image is also on Commons at Wikimedia.
They also have similar images by the Illinois Tunnel Company, which was succeeded by Illinois T&T.

[HarrySmith]

Came across this ad with the AE c/s. Notice the switch. on the left you can see the A cutout but on the right there appears to be a round disk with screw covering it. Strange.

Illinois T&T served Chicago was bought out by AT&T.

Maybe that was the printers attempt to camouflage the manufacturer. No where in the ad does it mention Automatic Electric. It is called The Automatic Telephone.

[Victor Laszlo]

How did that 11-hole dial work?

[unbeldi]

Maybe that was the printers attempt to camouflage the manufacturer. No where in the ad does it mention Automatic Electric. It is called The Automatic Telephone.

Well, the ad is not for selling this instrument, but for selling telephone service.  The manufacturer of the telephone is visible in the ads on the transmitter.
This was the essentially the only dial telephone available at the time in the U.S at the time.   I think all three ads are from the years 1911 to 1915.  WECo's first dial, the 7000 was patented in 1915 and was probably only run for trials in the U.S.  Even WECo used AE dials at the time.

The sale of the telephone division of the Tunnel Company to AT&T concluded in 1916.

Wikipedia has a decent article on the company.

[unbeldi]

How did that 11-hole dial work?

It worked the same as the 10 hole dial.  The 11th hole was just to eliminate customer confusion, so that they had a separate hole to use to reach the long distance operator desk, but the hole did not add extra pulses.

[HarrySmith]

The only part of the name that shows on the transmitter is Automatic. That would lead one to believe the rest of the name , which is displayed prominently above the picture, would be Telephone. No?

[unbeldi]

The only part of the name that shows on the transmitter is Automatic. That would lead one to believe the rest of the name , which is displayed prominently above the picture, would be Telephone. No?

In one of the ads I posted the whole name is visible.  But it doesn't really matter, does it?
Why, at that time, would anyone care or be curious about what is written on the instrument?

Later, many, and probably most telephone companies that bought equipment from the independent makers didn't advertise such information. In the 1950s, when companies licensed the 500 design, they never mentioned that little secret, and proudly announced the great new qualities of their new telephone set.  Marketing principles were not that different back then as they are today.