A Few Phones.... 302's and a 5302 - George Knighton

[George Knighton]

An eBay gamble that paid off.  Didn't cost much at all, and it turns out to really be ivory.  The pictures were bad and it was described as "cream" and I was afraid it was beige.

But...  It's ivory, and in very good shape.

Looking forward to the arrival of an Old Rose 302 from Vern P.  :-)

[paul-f]

Nice phone.

What's the model number?  The edge of the base looks like a 701B.

The housing appears to be for a 702B, so may be a later addition.  What is the date code from the inside of the housing?

[George Knighton]

Nice phone.

What's the model number?  The edge of the base looks like a 701B.

The housing appears to be for a 702B, so may be a later addition.  What is the date code from the inside of the housing?

The base says 702B, 11-69.  The base pad, however, seems much more worn than other Princess phones I have from around that time.

The handset cord and the line cord say 69, and there is a 69 and a C inside the circle inside the housing.

This is probably going to be my second fav Princess, after my white 701B from 1961.

[George Knighton]

Four Princess now, and I'm stopping and going back to the primary interest in 302's and that ilk.

There's an Old Rose on the way that I don't know what I'm going to want to work on, an Ivory waiting for its final assembly, and a put-together-from-parts metal 302 that still needs painting and assembly.

Here's the range of colours.

Black, Beige, Ivory and White. 

[George Knighton]

Latest acquisition, an Old Rose 302, courtesy of Vern P.  It is exactly as he described.  No cracks, nothing bad...just needs a lot of cleaning.

Now...searching for a green one....  :-)

[George Knighton]

I said a few days ago that my spree would stop for a while so I could put together and work on things I had already acquired.

I didn't mean to lie, but I evidently exaggerated a little.

:-)

I intended to get an ivory 354 from Vern P, but he's lost it or something.  This was an eBay find for relatively cheap, and it's in decent shape.  It's surprisingly ugly, considering how nice the 302 looks.  Might get a different fingerwheel and hook switch to make it stand out a little bit.

Also on the way is an early 500, also quite cheap, and a 202.  The 202 is a complete setup including subset.  It wasn't as cheap as the 500 and 354, but as far as working 202 setups go, it was fairly cheap.

I've really gotta lay off these things.

Ugly phone on an ugly carpet. 

[George Knighton]

Why are the bells black?

[poplar1]

The ringer is dated 3-52. In 1952, they used steel gongs. In 1953 I believe they returned to brass.

Also, some of the phones produced in 1943-1945 used steel gongs, but they were painted black.

[WesternElectricBen]

Great collection!
Ben

[George Knighton]

Here's a "survivor" unrestored but fully operational 202 with subset I bought, just to have something from before the era of my current interest.

I'm surprised it works, but it does. 

Couple things that struck me.

(1)The F1 is a huge improvement over the E1 on this set. 

(2)Those subscriber sets are HUGE.  I had no idea they were this big.  I always pictured something that was like the base of a 302 with a slim cover on it. 

Maybe I'll get into these more as I learn more about them.

[poplar1]

What is the number on the subset?

[George Knighton]

What is the number on the subset?

It has a red stamp on the bottom 634A.

Is that what you mean?

[poplar1]

634A means it was probably converted from a 534A. That is why it is so large. The 534A was made from around 1916. In 1930, the 584A subset with Bakelite cover was introduced.

The 584A could be made smaller for two reasons: the gongs were rotated 90
degrees so that they were parallel to the base and eliminating the metal cover changed the electrical properties (DSK, maybe you can explain that).

As was typical for the Western Electric distributing houses where the phones were remanufactured and sent back to the Bell companies, your 534A was taken back in and converted from a 46 (sidetone) induction coil to a 146 or 101A (antisidetone). The date on the induction coil may give you a clue as to when this was done. Even later, they used the same ringer as the 302s have (B1AL); these were coded 634BA. If you had a 634BA connected to a 202 with F handset or to a 151AL with 635A bulldog transmitter (F1 transmitter element) and 706A receiver (HA1 rec. element), then the 202, 151AL, and 302 were all electrically equivalent.

[George Knighton]

Thank you very much for all your help.

This thing's got some pretty big bells on it.

IV 40  <--Surely that doesn't refer to the last quarter of 1940?  Seems awfully late for a 202, but I still don't know very much.  :-)

[poplar1]

If you look at the dates on the two rubber cords and the dial number plate and any restamps on the transmitter, they are probably even later than 1940. If all 4 dates are the same year, then that may be a clue of the last time the 202 was reissued.

AT&T owned 100% of most of the Bell operating companies as well as Western Electric and Bell Labs. The Bell companies after a certain year were monopolies that were regulated by the state public utilities commissions. They were allowed to make a certain rate of return on their investment. However, they were very conservative when it came to unnecessarily throwing out the old and in with the new. Candlestick phones were installed as late as 1947 even though they hadn't been produced new since about 1930. This was partly because of the shortages after World War II. But you hardly ever got a brand new phone when you ordered a line. (The monthly line rate included one black dial phone.)

In 1931 (when my town went from manual to step-by-step dial service), 202s cost an extra 15 cents a month for 15 months ($2.25 total) if you wanted a hand telephone set instead of a candlestick. My grandfather ordered this and got rid of the 293A wall set that you had to stand up to use and speak directly into the transmitter.