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Started by Doug Rose, March 07, 2014, 06:55:02 PM

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dencins

#15
I have been thinking about this:

"The 24-carat gold plated finish on Eisenhower's telephone is one example of an option that never made it into the BSP's or catalogs."

After some research I found this:

"This information and the photo of three rotary-dial telephones (c1955) courtesy of the Eisenhower National Historic Site. They note, "Gold phones were not made so this one was custom-painted, likely done by request of Elizabeth Draper, Inc. so phone would match the color scheme of the house."

I would take the Eisenhower Historic Site as a reliable source and the gold finish was not done by Western Electric.

Here is a link to the National Park Service site:

http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/eise/PopCulture/gadgetsGizmos/EISE2728_grn_3421_red_9197_.html

Dennis Hallworth

G-Man

Quote from: dencins on March 11, 2014, 11:06:24 PM
I have been thinking about this:

"The 24-carat gold plated finish on Eisenhower's telephone is one example of an option that never made it into the BSP's or catalogs."

After some research I found this:

"This information and the photo of three rotary-dial telephones (c1955) courtesy of the Eisenhower National Historic Site. They note, "Gold phones were not made so this one was custom-painted, likely done by request of Elizabeth Draper, Inc. so phone would match the color scheme of the house."

I would take the Eisenhower Historic Site as a reliable source and the gold finish was not done by Western Electric.

Here is a link to the National Park Service site:

http://www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/eise/PopCulture/gadgetsGizmos/EISE2728_grn_3421_red_9197_.html

Dennis Hallworth

Hi Dennis-

I am unable to see where it states that Western Electric did not apply a customized gold finish. Instead it would appear that WECo applied the gold finish at the request of Eisenhower's interior decorator*.

Also, I would not bestow the title of telephone expert on whomever provide the following description of using a dial telephone:


"Upon lifting the receiver and being confronted with a dial tone, the President began to repeatedly press the dial tone button."


This lack of knowledge is further punctuated by describing some of the telephones as being manufactured by the "BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY" instead of the Western Electric company.


Here the description of another telephone that was customized with gold stars and presidential seal by WECo:






As with all other W.E.-made Bell tele-
phones, the 50 millionth had to pass rigid
tests to insure the best possible service,
Here Dorothy Yeager test for sidetone,
transmission level.

Vivian Herriford carefully packs famous
set for shipment to Headquarters. The set,
otherwise, a standard "500 type," here
shows its special features, president's seal
and 48 stars representing the States.

Stanley Bracken, W. E. president here
passes 50 millionth telephone to Cleo F.
Craig president of A. T. & T. Mr. Craig
journeyed to Washington to present set to
the President.





* "In 1929 Mrs. Draper and her sister, Tiffany Taylor, establishing a decorating firm called Taylor & Low. In 1935 she married Dr. George Draper and the next year she established a business under her own name.

In 1948 she was hired by Columbia University to refurbish the President's House to make it ready for the new president of Columbia, Dwight D. Eisenhower. She decorated the Eisenhowers' New York home as well as the Eisenhower farmhouse in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In 1980 Mrs. Draper was hired as a consultant to help the National Park Service document the history of the interior of the Eisenhower's Gettysburg farmhouse.

She decorated the American Embassy in Paris for Ambassador Amory Houghton, worked on a number of rooms at the White House, and did the interiors of Blair House. The Old Merchant's House on East Fourth Street in Manhattan was restored under her direction. In 1967, she said: "I came along in that lovely ladies' era of decorating and just before all the talented men began emerging in the field."



[/font]

G-Man

Also, perhaps Paul Fassbender can elaborate on his remarks regarding customized 500 instruments that are posted on his webpage:



Sets were painted for presentation sets and for special orders. Clear number plates were painted from behind with matching color. Reported sets found in:

-7 Bronze
-12 Dark Gold
-63 Gold

Shiny Gold
Shiny Chrome
Orange

poplar1

500 DM-12 Old Gold  Comcode 091328146  $18.24 Each

500 DM-63 Light Gold Comcode 091328153 $18.24 EA

500 DM-54 Brown 091491407 $18.24

These 3 colors were still available, but not promoted, as of November 1983.

Material Logistics Customer Premises Equipment and Supplies Catalog
, AT&T Information Systems, Issue One, November 1983
"C'est pas une restauration, c'est une rénovation."--François Martin.

dencins

#19
My apology - I agree my conclusion that the custom painting was not done by Western Electric is incorrect.  There is nothing to substantiate who did or did not do the custom painting.

I got caught between two hobbies - telephone and electroplating.  What actually caught my attention was the "plated".  I have been trying to find when plating plastic materials was developed.  Early electroplating of bakelite and catalin by sandblasting and coating with silver nitrate dates back to the 1930's but it did not work on other plastics.  Richard Feynman developed a process to work on other plastics while working as a chemist for a friend (early 1940's before he worked on the Manhattan Project).  However the commercial process did not become available until the early 1960's.  I have been looking to understand what took 20 years.

One thought is companies waited for patents to expire but I have not been able to locate patents on the subject from the 1940's.  I thought if a 1955 500 plastic telephone had been plated it would lead to other information but since it was painted that trail is another dead end.

I have been chasing information about another telephone.  In 1957 ITT gave Batista (Cuba) a gold coated telephone that looks like it may be a gold plated 302.   Two things I find odd - first ITT who bought majority interest in Kellogg would give a 302 and second it would give a 302 phone that was out of production in 1957.  I have seen articles that refer to it as gold coated and others that call it gold plated.  It may be a metal 302 that could have been plated.  If the body is plastic it would be early for plating plastic.

This does is not say Western Electric did or did not coat or plate the phone but if anyone has information I would be interested.

Picture of the gold telephone

Dennis Hallworth
       

dencins

Here is another gold telephone presented to Pope Pius XI in 1930 by catholics in the U.S. but this one is supposed to be solid gold.

The link is here:

http://electrospaces.blogspot.com/2013/02/papal-telephony.html

Dennis Hallworth

G-Man

#21
Hi Dennis-
Batista's gold-plated instrument is very interesting. According to Roger Conklin formerly of Kellogg and later ITT, it is a WECo 302 even though ITT was manufacturing their own models. I would assume that a 302 with a metal body was picked for plating while of course the handset was Bakelite.

This set was discussed on the TCI list a few years back. Here is a part of that thread:





Fulgencio Batista's gold-plated telephone, at the Museo de la Revolución / Museum of the Revolution, Havana-
                    http://www.flickr.com/photos/23323418@N03/5862876158/

Cubans wanted more, many more, telephones, but Compania Cubana de Telefonos failed to keep up with demand. At the end of 1955, more than 52,000 subscribers were waiting for installation of service; in 1956, the company received 60,000 applications, but installed only l,37l telephones. Cuban Telephone claimed that it could not expand services until the company received a repeatedly requested and long overdue rate increase. Critics charged that the company was badly managed and corrupt, and that dividends were paid to stockholders at the expense of maintenance.
U.S. State Department officials urged the Batista Administration to grant the rate increase. lTT cared not only for profits but for "the interests of Cuba," they argued. Ambassador Campo agreed that a rate hike was due, but he reported that President Batista feared a "strong public reaction." Then, on March 14, 1957, apparently after Cuban Telephone paid bribes, Batista decreed a rate hike of 20-percent.
Ambassador Gardner himself attended the decree-signing ceremony, and ITT rewarded Batista with a gold telephone.
The timing could not have been worse. Batista issued the unpopular decree the very day after Directorio Revolucionario youths died in an attack against the Presidential Palace. Later, with help from the Export-Import Bank, the company launched an $55 million expansion program to expedite the backlog of requests for service.
During the insurrectionary period, rebels regularly blew up telephone poles and lines. In early 1959 the new revolutionary government quickly canceled the rate increase. In March, Cuban Telephone became the first North American-owned firm to be "intervened" - taken over by the Cuban government.
Five months later the unpopular company, symbol of corruption and outside control, was formally nationalized.





This is a Western Electric 302 telephone set. These sets were never used in Cuba.  [/font]

The Cuban Telephone Company was purchased by the Behn brothers, Sosthenese and Hernan (the founders of ITT) in 1919. The Cuban company and the several small bankrupt telephone companies they had purchased in Puerto Rico, were the only companies that they owned when they incorporated ITT in 1920.
Havana was one of the first capital cities in the world with a 100% automatic dial telephone service in 1920. Washington DC did not convert its last manual exchange to dial until April 23, 1949. By 1925 Havana had the highest telephone density of any city in Latin America - which at that time was more than twice the telephone density of London, England. And that same year there were more telephones in Cuba than there were in all but three countries in Latin American, all of which had populations more than 10 times greater that Cuba. Those countries were Brazil, Mexico and Argentina where ITT also owned and operated telephone companies providing automatic dial service to a very high percentage of its telephone subscribers.
It is absolutely true that telephone expansion came to a halt in Cuba at around the beginning of WW II. But that was because the Government regulatory authorities refused to authorize any adjustment in telephone rates. In fact there had been no rate increases since 1919 when ITT took over this company by purchasing it from its private Cuban owners. With inflation and rising prices the company had operated for many years at a loss with zero dividends being paid to its ITT parent company.
The press announcement only tells a very distorted version of what really happened. With rates which resulted in the company operating at a loss, no investor, ITT or anyone else, could raise capital funds to expand the system to keep up with the growth in demand. Who is going to invest in order to to loose money to further increase its losses? And with inadequate rates service did indeed deteriorate.

The Bell System fortunately operated in an atmosphere where regulatory authorities authorized rate increases to keep up with the increase in equipment and operating costs. What happened in Cuba rate-wise happened in many foreign countries, leading to the nationalization of privately owned phone companies. But since the nationalizing governments had to "ration" their tax revenues to expanding telephone service, building roads, hospitals, schools, etc. telephone service generally went from bad to worse under government control.

 





In 1958 the Batista Government finally authorized a rate increase. This allowed ITT to obtain World Bank financing for catch-up expansion of the Cuban system. I worked for Kellogg at the time and we shipped 8 Relymatics to Cuba to replace magneto service with automatic dial service in 8 smaller Cuban towns. A close friend of mine was the installer in-charge.   

But after Castro took over, his government "intervened" and took over the management of Cuban Tel. Co. Payments on World Bank loans were stopped and the Cuban Government forbid the removal of dollars from Cuba to pay for loans or anything else. It suspended payment to AT&T for its share of international calls from Cuba, all of which to the rest of the world flowed through the AT&T international telephone network. When this happened all shipments of equipment to Cuba from Kellogg were suspended since the Cuban Government would not allow it to be paid for.
By 2000 telephone density had dropped to the lowest in the Americas - even lower than that in Haiti.
Cuban Telephone Company did not source its telephone sets from Western Electric. They were supplied exclusively from ITT's Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company, Antwerp, Belgium until 1954.
They then switched to ITT Kellogg's K-500 sets. ITT had an assembly plant outside of Havana, where kits of phone parts and PBXs from Kellogg were assembled, using Cuban labor, for Cuban Tel. Co. This created jobs in Cuba until the Cuban Government nationalized everything. ITT never received even one cent for its confiscated Cuban properties.
I suspect that there is more fiction than fact in the quoted information with respect to Cuban Telephone Company. In my 17 years with ITT, I worked closely with several Cubans who had managerial responsibilities in Cuban Telephone Company. Several escaped Cuba and joined the top management team in ITTs Puerto Rico Telephone Company.
Others had key positions in ITT's Chilean companies and at ITT Headquarters in New York. I can vouch these were gentlemen of impeccable character.
My boss in Peru had been part of the team that negotiated an arrangement with Cuba to continue international telephone service between the US and Cuba on the basis that only collect calls from Cuba to the US and calls to paid for in the US or in other countries would be completed. This was the only way AT&T could assure that it would be compensated for its share on telephone communications with Cuba.
Roger

BDM

Now that is fascinating to say the least! Thanks for posting.
--Brian--

St Clair Shores, MI

Scotophor

Dennis and everyone,


The "Batista" phone shown above looks to me like it was gold-leaf finished, not any kind of plating or paint.
Name: A.J.   Location: LAPNCAXG, EDgewood 6