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AE 40, 47 & 50 Base Code Observations (2017!)

Started by RotoTech99, January 03, 2017, 12:13:37 PM

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AE_Collector

I am fairly certain that BC Telephone would have been Phillips/AE Canada's largest single customer in Canada during this 1940-60 timeframe. Portions of Quebec were owned by GTE as well but nowhere near as many subscribers as BC Tel had. The three provincial government owned telephone companies in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba all used some AE equipment as well as Northern Electric equipment but British Columbia always had higher population than any of them most of the time. Alberta occasionally had a population close to that of BC.

So, there should be lots of Canadian made non BC Tel AE sets out there and we have some Alberta members on the forum who have AE sets that they acquired locally. I will work at getting codes from some of them specifically.

Terry

AE_Collector

Okay, I have gone through my Excel "Collection" list so these are all phones that I have in my collection, or spares that I will one day get to work on finding new homes for and a few that I have already moved to new homes. The key is that they aren't phone records sent to me from other list members or seen on eBay. I have bought virtually no AE 40/50 phones on eBay, already have too many of them! Many have been acquired from other local collectors and they were pretty much all telco employees thus they weren't buying these on eBay either, they would almost certainly all have been phones owned buy BC Tel at some point in their life. There were a few that I wasn't certain where they came from so I deleted those records. There are also a LOT that I don't have the codes recorded for and didn't go digging through boxes looking for them (yet), I just eliminated those records from this survey.

There are 4 phones recorded here that were not BC Tel phones:
The first row with 3 40 L sets are all phones that were not BCTel phones, bought from the USA on eBay or from fellow phone collectors and they are colored AE's. The fourth non BC Tel phone is one of the 50 L sets, the Mahogany/Walnut 50 I recently bought from Ontario with Phillips/Brockville stamped inside.

So every phone with a P before the L or N (25 of the 42 shown here) I am virtually certain was bought from AE/Phillips by BC Tel.

There is also a single 40 Y and a single 50 Z that also must have been bought by BC Tel. Those XYZ codes seem to be a different category than other letters.

The four 40 N sets and the eight 50 L sets that don't have a "P" also are phones bought by BC Tel and would seem to be earlier models of each that for whatever reason didn't get the "P" added. Were they NOT made in Canada or did Phillips not get onboard with adding the P in the earlier days?

Again, this list is all phones that would have been purchased by BC Tel with the exception of the three 40 N sets where I have indicated "eBay" and one of the 50 L sets.

Mdl   #   Ord L   From and Order #'s
40   3   L   eBay
40   4   N   All BCT 4023 & 4038's
40   2   PL   All BCT 4123's
40   5   PN   All BCT 4023's
40   1   Y   BCT
50   8   L   All BCT 5000 & 5002's
50   18   PL   All BCT 5001 & 5100's
50   1      Z   BCT

So a "P" prefixed before the Order Letter appears to be either Made in Canada OR possibly Made for BC Tel.

Will try to get a few examples from Alberta.

Terry

unbeldi

#392
In timely manner, I just ran across a Type 40 set that was made in Brockville and bears a B.C. Tel sticker.

P N 4023 K0  ER    INSP 4


http://www.ebay.com/itm/371897205898

AE_Collector

Yes I probably have the worlds largest supply of AE phones with those rehab shops stickers on the base.

Terry

unbeldi

#394
Quote from: AE_Collector on March 22, 2017, 07:21:06 PM
Yes I probably have the worlds largest supply of AE phones with those rehab shops stickers on the base.

Terry

quod erat demonstrandum.

(or at least faciendum)

AE_Collector

#395
I see that I am yet to provide proof to Unbeldi that I may have the worlds biggest collection of phones with BC Telephone repair shop tags in the bases! Soon...

Here we are 10 months later and I am reviving this topic that I am sure had the largest majority of forum members bored to tears! But...do a search on the forum for how many times members have asked what all the letters and numbers on the base of my AE 40 mean. Or when would my AE 50 have been built?

I speculated way back in this topic that those odd stamps of two capital letters (OG, TN, GR etc) virtually always seen on AE Transmitter and receiver capsules & condensers, and sometimes on dials and networks plus making up the third group of codes (CF7, GE3, RD5 etc) on the bases of AE40 era phones ...Could be date codes.

Quite often samples are found where these codes or most of them are the same or close to the same. These are phones that haven't been messed with much over the years. Other samples have a good mixture of very different "Two Letter Codes" and quite often bare the proof that various parts have been replaced over the years.

There needs to be both matching two letter date codes AND an actual date stamped on a phone to be able to begin to cross reference one to the other. Fortunately AE slipped up and for once threw us AE enthusiasts a bone! They continued two letter coding transmitter and receiver capsules for years after they began dating the bases of 80/90 series telephones in the 10-67-9 format. In that example the date is October 1967 and the Phone was built by assembly line/location 9. Thus if this were an older AE 40/50 era Phone the third field of codes on the base would be something like TJ9.

I knew that it would require pulling out and inspecting quite a few of my phones looking for samples that have had very little parts replacement over the years to actually pin down the two letter date code format and determine the actual years represented by letters of the alphabet.

The First letter of the Two Letter Code appears to be a Bi-Weekly or Fortnight indicator most likely Starting with A at the beginning or first Sunday or Monday of the year. I have examples of phones with actual dates later in the year that have First letters of the Two Letter Codes on components that are "later in the Alphabet". With First letters scattered through the 26 letter alphabet and a year having 52 weeks, Inam just assuming they chose to use all 26 letters with each one able to represent a two week timeframe.

The Second letter of the Two Letter Code is the year indicator and it appears to have started in 1932 at A and then rolled over to A again in 1958. So far my research into this has concentrated on the AE 80/90 era phones so let's say from 1958 (Letter A forward) and I will soon be looking for enough proof in my phones and records of phones belonging to other people to confirm the 1932 through 1957 iteration of Year A through Z. I see no indication that they dropped any letters such as I or O or Q, that is letters easily confused with each other or with numbers.

So....we are close to being able to pin down the year of manufacture of any AE Phone that has matching Two Letter Codes stamped on it somewhere. A bit more research and I will post a conversion chart. Knowing this information is going to help us pin down dates for changes in the phones such as cloth to plastic wire insulation, ringer types, etc.

Terry

HarrySmith

WOW! That is a lot of work & a lot of information. Thanks for posting this, it will be quite helpful in finally nailing down AE dates!
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

RotoTech99

Very good, that is a lot of useful coding information.

Things had been so quiet on the AE 40 coding, I was starting to wonder if anything new would turn up.

I'm very happy to see it.

Rototech99

AE_Collector

Yeah I just got away from it for awhile but will get back to updating the AE Code Highlites topic soon as well.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=17454.0

Just want to get enough confirmations that the 1932-1957 timeframe works for years A-Z as well. Will get some sample pictures of codes posted too.  I'm quite excited about this as deciphering this stuff has been on my "AE To Do List" for...well....Decades!

Terry


RotoTech99

Understandable... I've been hunting for parts for a Decotel. Series G Chestphone keeping me busy.

Mine was originally a rotary mixed component walnut with black vinyl inserts that employs a L shaped bracket and basepan that mounted the internal component plate to the and had larger feet than the other sets produced later.

I have the base, but I don't have the outer chest/lid, or the two other things I mentioned;
I'd like to rebuild it if I can get those parts.

That's been keeping me busy, but I'm checking the other topics regularly that I've participated in as well as the others.

Thank you for the updates, and belated Happy New Year's.

Rototech99

AE_Collector

I've got the complete (I think) guts to a chestphone of some sort without the case. Telco guys frequently removed the case to make a jewelry box out of it and then tossed or recovered (back to the Telco) the rest of it.

Terry

AE_Collector

#401
Here's a quick example of "Two Letter Codes" along with an actual date stamped on the backplate. In this instance it is an early AE 183 Spacesaver dated 10-60 on the back. It is early enough to be soft plastic, has a solid Bakelite handset and unusual to find on a 183...a Black fingerwheel.

Transmitter and Receiver capsules are both dated "CC" which by my reckoning "CC" is likely February 1960. Also, the Network is stamped "CC". That is quite a gap from C = February until 10 = October. I see that a fair bit on AE phones indicating that maybe large batches of components are made and dated, in this case likely the entire handset was assembled then parts or sub assemblies might sit for some time before being assembled into a phone to fill an order. Since the date on the backplate isn't really a specific electrical component, maybe these backplate dates were only stamped on as a complete Phone was packaged to fill an order. Sort of like a warranty date possibly. All just guesses on my part.

Terry


AE_Collector

#402
An AE 50 coded XL so likely November/December 1943. It has cloth wiring inside which is consistent with phones made before the end of the war. Also it has the earlier larger low impedance SL ringer usually found in the earlier AE40's and 50's.

Terry

AE_Collector

My Garnet Red AE 80 is pretty much the same vintage as Christians latest Find of the Month winner.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=19460.0

Mine is made for AE by Leigh Electric and is clearly dated 10-59-21. October 1959 and maybe 21 is the code for Leich Electric....don't know.

Both handset capsules are dated CB so maybe February 1959.

Looking at Christians his base stamp still shows Chicago 7 rather than Northlake making me think it could be very slightlynolder than mine. His codes are BP7 which doesn't work if it is Month/Year. More like his Is Year/Month...B=1959 and P maybe August 1959. Thenorder of he two letters is a dilemma, I have found more than one example thatbjust don't work for Month/Year but look quite feasible the other way around. Knowing how particular AE was about this sort of stuff this isn't surprising. I think that Unbeldi and I speculated that potentially different assemblynlines (or maybe one at least) was setting their dates different from the rest.


AE_Collector

#404
Was just looking at Stubs wiring diagram post for AE35.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=18385.0

Ken posted this picture of the back with code 9CS. A perfect example of the mixed up format sometimes seen for these codes "two letter codes". The plant/assembly line digit is virtually always the last entry not the first. Most often the two letters seem to be the Bi-weekly Letter then the Year letter. I'm convinced that the 26 Letter year chart started with A in 1932 and then rolled over to A again in 1958.

Since AE35's were made from about 1935 to 1940 and since this Code is obviously flipped around, I would say that on Kens Phone the C is 1934 and the S is 19th biweekly period so likely made in September 1934. This would seem quite likely when they would be ramping up production to allow them to start shipping this brand new modern wall phone companion to the very recently released AE 34 Desk Phone.

If they always put the number first when doing the codes as YEAR - MONTH rather than MONTH - YEAR it would be easy to "decode". But I have seen several examples where the number IS in the third position but the letters can't possibly be MONTH - YEAR, they need to be flipped for the date to make sense.

Kens example also clearly indicates that these codes were added at a different time than the model number codes. So phones could be assembled or at least be partially assembled ahead of time leading to some internal components being dated a bit earlier than the back plate. Then the backplates stamped at the time of final assembly, packaging and shipping. This could then be somewhat of a warranty indicator as well then.

I knew this wasn't going to be easy but am still very encouraged by the results. Who would have thought that AE dated things!

Terry