I picked up this Kjobenhavns phone today. The shell, handset and hook all appear to be original danish parts, but the dial and internals all seem to be western electric parts. Were original danish phones brought to north america in bulk and refurbished this way? or is this someones project from the 60s?
I order to legally connect these on Bell System lines you had to let Bell convert them. This even applied to older WE sets such as 51AL sticks amd even 302 sets. Similar guts were used to convert the Design Line sets .The telephone company owned the guts.
The KTAS sets worked well if a modern transmitter replaced the old one.
Turtle Lake Telephone brought thousands of these telephones into the US in the 50's or 60's.
As rdelius pointed out, to use them on the Bell system they needed conversion.
There is a BSP that shows how to convert this style of phone to meet Bell Standards.
Jim S.
The version of the story that I heard was that loads of these were exported from Europe when they were considered life expired in the 50s or 60s. As has already been said, a large shipment went to the US, where they were sold as 'antique' telephones. When supplies started to dry up they started remanufacturing some parts until they were eventually making pretty much entirely new phones, which is why some people think they are modern copies.
I'd be interested to see more of the 'Bell conversion' required in the US because I've got a very similar phone in ivory with a dial with US markings, but it looks original inside, with dates in the 1930s stamped onto some of the internal components. Did some not get the internal conversion and got shipped out again somehow? Here in the UK the GPO wouldn't let normal private subscribers buy their own phones until the early 1980's, so it's hard to believe it ended up here much before that date. However I do see quite a few in antique ships etc, some of which do have obviously modern repro parts, so the story of later remanufacturing seems to stand up. I'm no expert though, so I'd quite like to know more.
I think th ebsp is early 1980's. It is one of the scans in the tci library.
Jim S.
Dial with US markings = Canadian parts on Danish copy of #10 dial .Bell would replace most if not all working parts . Independants might have not cared about it as much.The ivory ktas sets were rebuilds with new ivory parts
Dial with US markings = Canadian parts on Danish copy of #10 dial .Bell would replace most if not all working parts . Independants might have not cared about it as much.The ivory ktas sets were rebuilds with new ivory parts