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My Phone Collection - Stephen Furley

Started by Stephen Furley, August 16, 2009, 02:35:25 PM

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McHeath

No hookswitch eh?  That would be an interesting deal,

"Ya comrade, ve jus' plug en' zee foen when yu xpect ze call frum ze comrade, it all be vera easa, unlyka yu decadant vestern foens wit' der boo-gha-wa hookswithies."




Stephen Furley

This is a strange beast.  The line cord has three wires, one goes to the two top pins in the plug, which are permanently strapped together; one wire goes to each of the bottom pins.  Connecting the line to either of the bottom pins, and the top ones will get dial tone. What the difference between the two wires is, I don't know.  There seems to be no high-impedance 'monitor' mode, unlike every other test set that I've got.  Will post pictures on Monday.

McHeath

Very weird.  And I bet that some Comrade from 1968 would have given us a long and heavily techish monologue about why it was better than any Western phone. 

Stephen Furley

#33
Some pictures of some more of my collection, this time some of the test sets:

First the Русский телефон.  I know nothing more about it.

Next is the GPO telephone No. 280, introduced in the '50s to replace the No. 80, which did not have a dial.  Some of these remained in use into the '80s.  It's made of rubber, and heavy.  The dial is smaller than usual, and has smaller holes, but it is not a pin dial.  Apart from the dial the only control is the red button which picks up the line.  On the Mk. 2 model, which this is, it can be twisted to lock it in.

The yellow one is a 282, made by Besson.  Contempra style moving finger stop dial.  Red and green LEDs serve for polarity indication.  Switch on the back has three positions, monitor, talk and microphone mute.

The second picture shows the other side of each of these. That's all the dial ones I have, apart from the CMC Trub-L-Shooter which I've posted a picture of previously, and which has both dial and buttons.

BT supplied their engineers with telephones from three different manufacturers, but called all of them 284. The yellow one was from Besson, the orange one from Whitely, and a blue one from Chesilvale.  I have examples of the first two, but not the Cheailvale one.  However, Chesilvale have now renamed themselves Tempo, and basically the same model, with a couple of minor changes, and now in grey and a darker shade of blue is still a current model.  The one in the picture is not mine, It's the one I use at work, and it belongs to them, but I've put it in the picture for completeness until I manage to get hold of a Chesilvale one of my own.  While they look quite different the features which these models offer are almost identical:

High-impedance monitor mode.
Polarity indication.
LD and DTMF dialing.
Earth and timed break recall.
Last number redial.
Microphone mute.

The Whitely one also features a button marked 'FL', but I haven't yet worked out what this is for.  Again, these are shown from both sides.

Traditionally, these type of test sets would have been fitted either with clips, or with various odd plugs to fit test jacks in exchange equipment.  One of these is shown on the left in the last picture.  It has different pins at each end, and at one end there should be a sort of locating prong, but this has been cut off for some reason in this example.  I have another one of these plugs somewhere which is complete.

These days test telephones just have a normal BT type plug, and a wide range of adaptor cords are available to connect them to other things.  The ones which I have are also shown in the last picture.  The first one goes to clips; the next two to two different types of Krone connector.  The green wire with a clip on each of these is an earth wire, to enable earth recall to be used if required.  The other four are not used only with test sets, but with normal telephones as well.  The longer ones connect to a RJ-45 plug, and are used when analogue telephones are patched though structured network cabling.  We only have this in two small areas of our building.  Over there you could just plug a normal modular 'phone plug into a RJ-45 socket, and it would connect with the correct wires, but a BT plug will not fit into a RJ-45, so over here we need these adaptors.  There reason for the two different types is that one is a PABX master socket, which contains a bell capacitor, while the other is a secondary socket, which does not.  The two small adaptors are to convert to the RJ-11 connectors which you use.  They are used to connect to things like ISDN terminal adaptors, which often have RJ-11 connectors for analogue telephones.  The reason for two different ones is the same as with the RJ-45 adaptors.







McHeath

You have a very interesting collection.  Most of your stuff I've never seen before, no doubt due to it's being used in the Old World.   ;)

That Russian phone is cool looking, I don't recall you saying but you may have, does it work?

Stephen Furley

Quote from: McHeath on September 25, 2009, 12:37:33 AM
That Russian phone is cool looking, I don't recall you saying but you may have, does it work?

Yes, it works.  At least it does as far as making a call is concerned, I can't see any way that it could receive one.  If it's plugged in then it seizes the line, so the caller would get an engaged tone, and if it's not plugged in then obviously it's not going to work.  I suppose you could connect an external bell to the line, and then plug it in to answer the call when the bell rings.  The handset is of good quality, the dial less so.  The dial seems to run at the normal speed; I've no idea what the Russian make/break ratio is, but it's certainly close enough to ours to work.  If anything, I think it's more likely to conform to European standards than American ones.

The standard way to answer the telephone in Russia seems to be to say 'Я слушаю', roughly Ya slooshio, which means I am listening, though it often seems to be shortened to simply 'Cлушаю'.  I learned a little Russian before I went there for a week, in 1974, but didn't get the chance to use it again until I was at the South end of Brooklyn a few years ago, where just about everything seems to be in Russian; it's surprising how much cam back to me after so long.  I saw an American film, 'Everything is Illuminated',  recently; some of the dialogue is in Russian, and found I could understand some of it without needing to read the English subtitles.

gpo706

Stephen, I just got a yellow 284 PB, where do I get a PST adaptor to croc clips for it?

Cheers,

Scot

PS you've got mail.
"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

Stephen Furley

#37
GPO706,

I've seen your message, but haven't replied to it yet; I've just escaped from work, arrived in Bradford yesterday evening, so I should have some time to catch up over the next few evenings.

RS Components do the croc clip and 4-pole Krone adaptors, but I don't know if you still need a business account to be able to buy from them.  They don't do any other types.

JMW do a better range, and they have a shop on Ebay at:

http://tinyurl.com/ybosfa7

One type which I wanted to buy, the 'Bed o' nails' type is not listed at the moment.  The croc clips one is a 6/10E.  This is where I got my mini-Krone one from.  They also sell Quante SID and Pouyet connectors, but these are little used in this country.

CMS also sell them, and they have the 2-pole Krone one, which JMW do not, but their postage is very high for small orders.  http://tinyurl.com/ybm5epz

( dead link 04-09-22 )

HobieSport

I don't speak Russian but I liked the movie "Everything is Illuminated".

Good luck on your most rigid search!
-Matt

gpo706

"now this should take five minutes, where's me screwdriver went now..?"

Stephen Furley

#40
Quote from: bingster on September 05, 2009, 06:26:47 PM
Stephen, the "fatboy" is very similar to the Western Electric 202 in that it was fitted with two different handsets over the course of it's life. The phone you have has the later of the two handsets used with these bases.  So while you will see an older style handset on this base, the handset you have is perfectly correct, too.  If you'd like the earlier handset, ericofon.com sells them individually for USD30, here:

http://www.ericofon.com/catalog/classic1/sc1212.htm

I said that it might be useful if the Fatboy had the wrong handset on it; now I can explain.  I collected a parcel from the Post Office today; they tried to deliver it last Thursday when I was out, and on Friday morning I had to leave home early to go to Yorkshire.  I came home yesterday, so today was the earliest I could collect it.

It contains a SC 1243, in reasonably good condition, except for a bit of paint worn off around the handset cradle.  The handset cord is a quite new looking coiled one in very good condition, and so will be useful elsewhere.  The dial is an AE one which seems to be in good condition.  The Vinyl line cord at first seemed to be in reasonable condition, and had a good plug fitted, but on looking more closely there was a short section which had shrunk to a smaller diameter, and was quite rigid; when I tried to bend it it just snapped like a glass rod.  When I looked there seemed to be no inner insulation in this section, just the wires in a shrunken, brittle sheath, but it's odd the way that even the wires snapped when I tried to bend it slightly.  I don't know what had happened to it; some sort of heat or chemical damage maybe?  For now I'm going to fit a vinyl line cord which I removed from my WE 302, so that I can test it.  I won't do any more with it for now.

It is fitted with a handset of the type normally fitted to a WE 302, which is not in very good condition; It's been painted black at some time, though most of the paint has worn off.  There's no embossed name on this handset like they normally have.  The transmitter and receiver elements both date from 1948.  In the longer term I'm thinking of buying one of the older 'curved' SC handsets from Ericofon if they still have them, they are much cheaper from there than from Oldphoneworks.  If I fitted this to my Fatboy, then the very good condition 'Horsehoof' one that is presently on the Fatboy could go on the 1243.  All I'd then need is a new set of cords for the 1243; what would be the correct type, black cloth?

Still no sign of the Galion, it must be about six weeks now; unless it gets sent back to the seller as undeliverable I doubt that I'm going to see it now.  I bid on a 5302 from the same seller a couple of weeks ago, but was outbid; it went for what seemed a very high price.

So, to sum up, the American 'phones I now have are:

WE 302 and 500.

AE 40 and 80.

SC 1212 1243 and 1543.

CMC Trub-L-Shooter.

Still nothing from North, Leich or Northern Electric.

I'm not going to bother with the AE 34 or SC 1443 because they are very similar to models which I already have.

bingster

Quote from: Stephen Furley on October 01, 2009, 07:21:54 PMI don't know what had happened to it; some sort of heat or chemical damage maybe? 

I've seen this happen to electric cords before.  They get incredibly rigid in one spot, and depending on the type of vinyl or rubber used, I'm sure it could cause shrinking, too.  It's usually caused by a cord hanging too close to an electric baseboard heater.

You might try ebay.ca for Northern Electric sets.
= DARRIN =



McHeath

You have more variety in your American phone collection than I do! 

Stephen Furley

I happened to find several at good prices within a short period, put the postage is really a problem; it's often more than the price of the 'phone.  I must stop buying for a while.

Other than the test sets I'm basically collecting standard desk sets, not wall ones because I move them around frequently, and not special ones with extra features, illuminated dials etc.  I'm also not really interested in ones which don't look like standard telephones, Micky Mouse for example.  Over here that means only a few models, 150, 232, 300 series, 706, 746 is about it.  The 162 looks the same as the 232, so I missed that one out.  The same models were made by several different makers, in much the same way as the 500 was made by SC, ITT and various other people, the GPO basically standardised on one model at a time.  It was rather different over there, with each maker having their own design in each era, so there are more to collect.  The odd one is SC, where the 1243, 1443 and 1543 form a obvious series, but the 1212 'Fatboy' doesn't really fit in.  When were the 1243 and the 1212 introduced?

Stephen Furley

After some problems I've now got the SC1241 working.  Other than he paint being worn off in places it's not in bad condition.  One thing about it that I don't understand, why does the flat metal piece between the hookswitch plungers, the piece that forms acts as a carrying handle and has the SC name embossed on it, press down slightly against a spring?  Did it operate a switch on some models?  On mine it doesn't do anything.

The Galion never did arrive, so that's another model back on my 'wanted' list.