Sometimes it's the little things....

[AET]

So, my folks bought a new building for their gun store.  It is an old downtown storefront type building.  It's all original period style throughout, hardwood floors, light fixtures, etc, etc.  And there's an apartment upstairs, which I am moving into.  And when checking it out, my highlight of the whole thing was when I was looking near the baseboard area, there was a hardwire jack still in the living room.  We've owned a lot of old buildings but we only had 4 prongers once, so the hardwire thing was kinda neat to me.  Anybody else get excited by little phone relics like this?

[bwanna]

o boy, do i, tom    i love it when i stumble on the 4prongers or the light transformers on a customers prem. of course, i always replace the jack for free   the transformer, i tell them, should be removed as it could cause trouble on the line. .   one of these days i will run into a fellow collector who won't buy my line

[AET]

We're lucky that we're still kind of a niche market, keeps the prices down and people 'throw away' things that are valuable to us, so they have no problem letting us have them thigs.

[Tonyrotary]

Yep Tom that is cool. The trimline phone I bought came with a hardwire jack still attached to the line cord. I love it. Also at my Great Aunts house when I was a kid I noticed a jack in one of the rooms looked different from the rest. I asked my Aunt how do you plug in the phone to that and she replied phones used to be permanently wired to the jacks.

Donna, if you ever came to my place I would ask you to install the 4 prongers and hard wire jacks...

[AET]

I am hoping now to get my hands on a hardwired phone, and that the jack is still functional, I also plan on putting in some 4-prongers.  My dad and grandpas said they may have some jacks laying around that I can have.

[Phonesrfun]

Can you guys define what you mean by a hardwired jack??

-Bill

[Dan/Panther]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the small 2" X 2" box, usually mounted to the baseboard, that the line cord to the phone is hardwired into with spade connector, or sometimes just solid wire twisted around the screw, instead of plug in.
D/P

[Phonesrfun]

You mean like these?

[AET]

The one in the apartment is almost like a wall jack for an outlet or light switch, but it's just a circle in the center, similar to that for cable. But without the coax end.

[Phonesrfun]

I guess the trouble I am having with the terminology is that in my thinking, a "jack" is something that a plug plugs into, and is therefore not a hardwired thing.

Phone companies did have a cover that had to be hardwired from behind and the telephone mounting cord had to be threaded through the hole to get to the terminal screws inside.  I don't believe they called this a jack.

Back "in the days" when only a telephone installer could install a phone, these were popular because they could use a standard electrical box, and be flush mounted with the surface of the wall and not have a block screwed to the baseboard.

All that having been said, let me apologize for seemingly splitting hairs when it comes to terminology.  I always get upset at the know-it-alls on the other telephone forums that go on and on shooting others down for not calling some widget the exact thing that the Bell System did in its publications.  That is not my intent.  I just did not really know what was being referred to.  Now I know.

Thanks.

[bwanna]

bill, i would refer to the items shown in your pic as mounting blocks,  right now the correct bsp term escapes me. i can't quite picture the flush mount connector you mention.

tom, the circle you refer to, are there wires in it? it probably covers a small conduit that runs to the basement or wherever the protector was located. there would have been 3conductor cloth covered wire run through the conduit.

tony, i would to love wire your house in HAWAII. would it be worth the price of air fare to you

d/p yeah, i think that is what they are talking about.

sorry if i am rambling. just worked 28 out of the last 36 hours.

[AET]

I did not look in there. I showed it to my dad and he just said "yep, there's a hardwire jack for ya"

[dsk]

I have seen some of those old circular  connection boxes called "rosette" in some older books, can't remember where.

dsk

[LarryInMichigan]

The boxes to which Tom is referring are not uncommon.  Years back, I rented an apartment in a complex which was built in the early sixties.  There was a standard electrical size coverplate with a round hole in the middle on the bedroom wall.  I removed the plate, expecting to find a mounting block so that I could connect my phone.  Instead, I found an empty box with the opposite end covered by the back side of another coverplate with a hole in the middle which was mounted on the wall of the bedroom in the next apartment.  The neighbor's bedroom was visible through the hole.  I placed my dresser in front of that box.

Larry

[bingster]

The BSP term that bwanna is thinking of is "connecting block."  The common small block is the 43A connecting block.  The one Tom's talking about is the flush-mount four-prong receptacle that receives the four prong plugs.  The newer ones have a modular jack in the round section, rather than four holes for the four-prong plugs.

Here's the modular version: