But not new to old phones... I just found this site the other day and signed up.
I've been collecting old phones since I was 9 years old and my first 2 old phones were a couple of touchtone (round button) Trimlines from my grandma's house that I had been interested in strongly years before and I finally had come up with 2 phones to swap them out with, so I did and that's how it got started for me.
My first rotary phone was a Stromberg Carlson Art Deco phone. and now over the years I have a good size collection of about 45 phones, touchtone and rotary, most made by Western Electric, also some by Northern Telecom and Stromberg Carlson.
So that's a little bit about me and my Phone collecting hobby, I hope to enjoy learning alot from this forum.
Jonathan
Welcome aboard Jonathan. Look forward to seeing some pics of your collection!
Welcome, Jonathan!
I am sure you will find this to be a great place and full of information. We all learn from each other.
-Bill Geurts
Welcome to the forum, Jonathan!
Welcome!
Welcome aboard, Jonathan! We now have at least two members named Jonathan on the Forum.
I think you'll enjoy yourself here.
Welcome Jonathan. I see that you are in my old home town. You probably know that, in the old days, the Chicago area was the largest telephone design and manufacturing center in the USA (A significant percentage of the radios were made there as well). Kellogg had a huge factory which I believe was right next to Midway airport. Automatic Electric had their plant in Northlake. Cook Electric, which I believe was once part of Stromberg Carlson, had a plant in Morton Grove. The Teletype Corporation, later ATT Bell Labs had a large facility on Touhy in Skokie and Niles. It was turned into a shopping center about 20 years ago.
Larry
Don't forget about Hawthorne Works which was in Cicero. It had 45,000 workers there at it's peak.
A sad day in it's history was when the Eastland capsized. >http://www.porticus.org/bell/eastland.html <
Dougpav
Welcome to Phonelandia. There are 2 or 3 people here who are kinda into old phones. ;) ;)
Thanks for all the warm greetings everyone! I'm gonna go decided what phones I want to take pics of first.......... I think I'll start out with my black 500 made in 4-52.
That will be a nice one. Looking forward to it.
-Bill Geurts
Here's my 500, I actually found this one on Ebay and managed to win it. This was made 4-52, and then there's another date on it from when I imagine it was refurbished. The housing definitely does not look original, yet it looks like the handset is. the dial is original, and I of course added that cord on the back of it so I could plug it in.
Welcome, also I had never heard about that boat sinking before. What a tragedy.
And now my Yellow 500. I was leaving out the front door one day and I found this phone all by itself sitting on the chair on the porch covered in THICK gray dust, so bad I couldn't even tell the phone was yellow. So of course all excited to see what it was I ended up going straight in the kitchen and washing the housing and handset and such. Little did I know is it in near perfect condition minus some damage on the right side at the bottom which really goes unnoticeable unless you look closely.
It was made in 1965, was factory painted some time in it's life and has it's original dial, and of course it was modularized at some point.
and the beige one is another Ebay find, nothing special in decent condition and it spent it's life in Southern Indiana.
Here is my red 500. Nothing special in how I acquired it other than I didn't have to fight for it on Ebay like every other red WE phone listed on there. It was made in 1954 and was refurbished in 1979 and was painted & modularized.
Nice collection you've got there. Welcome to the forum.
Hahahahaha I've got about 41 more to show.... eventually I hope to get them all in the same room so I can take one big picture of at least most of them.
Oh and yes I actually DO know the approximate number of phones I have, although it's time for a re-count. LOL
Welcome!
As you see we are a a wide range of different people kept together with this interests, and together its not many telephone related problems we don't have suggestions of how to solve.
At least I have got enormous help here. Thank you everybody!
dsk
Quote from: GusHerb on March 11, 2010, 03:44:45 AM
Hahahahaha I've got about 41 more to show.... eventually I hope to get them all in the same room so I can take one big picture of at least most of them.
Oh and yes I actually DO know the approximate number of phones I have, although it's time for a re-count. LOL
Jonathan,
Are you sure you know the approximate # of phones you have? I bet your guess is low. About 10 years ago I was packing up to move. Most of my phones had been boxed up for a few months. I decide to count the 20 or so newly acquired phones that were still scattered around the house. 20 or so turned out to be 73.
Welcome to the forum,
Jim
I'm gonna have to find out exactly what I have.... LOL they all live in my room and I count 14 on display in here the rest are put away in various odd places.
A little late but WELCOME!
Your beige set with leather and round feet is interesting. It shows how resourceful those phone companies were.
The beige one was made in 1956 and I don't know how many times it was refurbished. I do like it as a good "using" phone.
Gus:
Somewhere in my garage there is a 1953 black WE500 with ... ... ... 302 leather feet! Go figure. :o