Any ideas what the meter is for?
The seller apparently doesn't know.
http://tiny.cc/1k40c
Well, it's German, and they love to put meters on everything... ;) Wild guess: A long distance timer?
Joking aside, that is really curious, I've never seen anything like it, and I can't read what the meter says in the small photo. Also, notice the very curious oval shaped bells. How do you manufacture an oval shaped bell? What do they sound like? Oh that German ingenuity!
I've seen digital meters on KTAS phones, but I've never seen an analogue meter before. That's really interesting. I've never seen the oval shaped gongs, either. They seem to go against every principle of bell making.
Gebührenzähler und dazugehörigem Schlüssel means basically a charge meter with the original key. A Schaltbilder is a schematic. So Hobie you are probably correct.
Yes, those oval bells really caught my eye too.
I would love to hear them ring.
I might ask the seller how much he wants to ship the phone to England and make a bid if it's reasonable.
Google translation gives fees counter for Gebührenzähler so it looks like you were right Hobie.
Timer on the phone, what will those wild and crazy Germans think of next? ;)
That phone seems really interesting
In a similar vein, here's another unusual German phone, this time a pay phone.
Check out the engineering of the dial mechanism.
http://tiny.cc/bw65j
In talking to my wife about this phone she recalled that her brother, who lived in Germany from the early 80's to 2006, had a German rotary phone in his house in the 80's that had a timer built into it. It was so they could time the calls, which were very expensive.
Quote from: McHeath on April 19, 2009, 12:03:27 PM
In talking to my wife about this phone she recalled that her brother, who lived in Germany from the early 80's to 2006, had a German rotary phone in his house in the 80's that had a timer built into it. It was so they could time the calls, which were very expensive.
I've seen a number of old stand alone call timers on ebay here in the UK. I remember as a child when my parents called relatives overseas, they always had a clock by the phone.