Who collects vintage touch-tones?

[Stephen Furley]

What's a K series handset?

I'm not sure stat I agree with you.  The handset on the Ambassador/Statesman, it's the same on both, is fairly conventional, but that on the Viscount, almost exactly contemporary with it, isn't .  I said that I didn't like the Viscount, one of the things that I didn't like was the handset, it didn't seem to fit easily into the hand, and it was easy to put it down wrongly, so it was still off-hook.  the more conventional handset seemed to work better than the more modern looking one.  Going back further, the Trimphone handset didn't work very well either; it was designed to use a small transmitter and receiver originally intended to be used in an operator's headset of the day.

If I can find them I'll put up a couple of other examples tomorrow of other 'new' telephones of the period.  Very different to the traditional one.  The handset on the 706 was quite similar to that used on the 162, the 232 and the 332 except that it was lighter, and available in a wider range of colours.  The 162 dates back to 1934 I think, and it didn't change greatly in shape for almost 50 years.  The Statesman placed the handset lengthways rather than crossways, and thereby facilitated using the same model for desk or wall mounting, the shape of the handset was modernised somewhat, and production cost was further reduced, but the quality was largely maintained, and some improvements were even made, unlike most later designs.  Take another look at the design of the headset on the Statesman; it's actually quite similar in shape to that on the WE 500, though introduced about 20 years later.

[McHeath]

Here is a K series handset.  It's from the 70's, and was a "modern" handset for the newer phones being designed in that time.  I don't think they are as comfortable to use as a G series, nor as easy to cradle in the neck.  For a long time they were used on lots of office and residential phones, up till the late 90's, now they have been largely replaced with odd shaped handsets of very organic designs that are often cool looking but hard to use.

[Stephen Furley]

Here are a WE 500 and a Statesman with the handsets side by side.  The Statesman one would be simpler and cheaper to make, it's moulded in two parts rather than three, but it's quite similar in shape to the WE one.

[McHeath]

Dang, you've got one nice phone collection!  I don't even have a red WE 500 like that!  And your Brit phones are great, geesh.

The K series was also made in two sections, I never thought of why but as you say probably to reduce costs.  Also there are no caps to remove, which would reduce customer fiddling.  Indeed I have no idea how to open up the WE K sets that don't have screws.  (some do)

[jiggerman]

Picked up two Northern Telecom touch-tone phones last Saturday at a local yard sale. They were priced at $4.00 for the pair so I couldn't pass them up. I thought they would look nice along side my rotary phones.  Both phones were made in 1986. I was kind of disappointed when I saw they were made in Taiwan, being Canadian I thought I was getting a phone made here. Like everything else it's hard to find anything made in Canada or in USA these days. Jiggerman

[bingster]

I've always liked the looks of those.  They were also sold by the Bell System down here (at least by C&P), along with the Jotter and a couple other Northern sets with that handset. 

[jiggerman]

These two phones were sold by Bell Canada as they both have Bell stickers on the bottom.

[bingster]

I understand, but there was also some sort of arrangement to supply them to the American Bell System, too.  I have a Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. (Bell Atlantic) brochure which shows all the telephones available to their customers, and they include several NT phones.

[McHeath]

Like everything else it's hard to find anything made in Canada or in USA these days.

Uh, corndogs are still made here.

Those are pretty odd looking phones, I think I like the look but it certainly is different than anything we ever had here back in the day.  Odd they were already made overseas at that time. 

[Stephen Furley]

Several Canadian designs made their way over here in the early '80s, but I've never seen anything like that.

[foots]

I'm with Stephen, I've never seen phones like that before. Neat looking phones.

[Jester]

I saw this 1554 on ebay a couple weeks ago & had to have it.  Turquoise seems to be an uncommon color for this style phone & it just "spoke" to me.  The handset comparison in the third pic. illustrates the general discoloration of the plastics that I was dealing with.

[McHeath]

I made a few early bids on that 1554 but gave up as the kiddos needed shoes. 

It's pretty cool and I'm glad you got it, knowing it will be well cared for.  The early 10 button touch tones really catch my attention as well.

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice phone---for a touch tone!

Really, it reminds me of everything turquoise we had in our kitchen when I was a kid---early to mid 1960's.

[contraste]

I came across this picture (while wasting away an afternoon on Google) of a very early TT prototype.