Create Custom Dial Card?

[nil4k]

Sorry to follow up on myself --

I made a quick pass at matching the gray of the older number cards but I didn't quite match the typesetting of the pictured 913 MA1 card:

https://postscriptcode.com/KL5card.pdf
(it may take some time for the cloudflare caching of older versions I made along the way to catch up with the present version pictured below)


Believe it or not, the installed card matches the other KL5 cards below the phone but you can't really tell in the photo:

[DuinoSoar]

Those look really nice, @nil4k.

What fonts and sizes did you use for the various parts of the number card?  (Or perhaps you already mentioned that and I missed it?)

BTW, like you, I seem to recall that, when I was a "young fella", NBTel (our local telco back in the day) issued white dial cards instead of the light-grey ones.  (But now, I am far from being a "young fella" and it is entirely possible, even likely, perhaps, that I am mis-remembering.)

Although NBTel was not a direct subsidiary of Bell Canada, its parent was a holding company, Bruncor, based in Saint John, NB.  In 1960 Bell Canada gained a "controlling interest" over Bruncor.  All that to say that I do not believe that NBTel was actually compelled to follow Bell Canada (or Bell) rules and practices, although I believe they were followed quite closely.  It was probably just easier for them to print number cards on white card stock and cut or punch them out, rather than having to obtain the light-grey blanks from Bell.

I could be wrong about all this and am just going by my (admittedly faulty) recollection.

All the best,
  Ed ("The DuinoSoar")

[dsk]

I printed out one of these today, the most difficult is to cut it out.
https://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=28657.msg273907#msg273907

[paul-f]

...I seem to recall that, when I was a "young fella", NBTel (our local telco back in the day) issued white dial cards instead of the light-grey ones.  (But now, I am far from being a "young fella" and it is entirely possible, even likely, perhaps, that I am mis-remembering.)

It was probably just easier for them to print number cards on white card stock and cut or punch them out, rather than having to obtain the light-grey blanks from Bell.

I could be wrong about all this and am just going by my (admittedly faulty) recollection.

Ed,

In the 1990s and early 2000s I made many trips to visit friends in St. Stephen and St. John. Two worked for NB Tel, and one had a line on the returned sets. He attended many Canadian and US phone shows and kept us supplied with Uniphones and other gear for many years. Here are a few number cards from some of the returned sets from that time period to help refresh your memory.

[DuinoSoar]

Wow!  Thanks for posting that, @paul-f.  That's quite the collection of dial cards.

I grew up in Fredericton (although most folks would wonder if I ever actually "grew up" ), but I do not recall ever seeing any of those bilingual cards before today (the ones with "AREA 506 RÉGION").  I would be almost willing to bet that those were unique to NB Tel because New Brunswick is the only "officially bilingual" province in Canada, with both English and Acadian French (so the province is also known as Nouveau‑Brunswick).

I thought it ironic that one of your cards has "EXT." pre-printed but has no extension number, and another one has "EXT." typed or stamped on the card (with the extension following).

So those colours look to be slightly "off-white" to my old eyes, but maybe they are, indeed, a VERY light-grey.

I guess a trip to Wally-World is in order to find some light-grey and ivory coloured card stock.

BTW, Happy April Fools' Day, everyone. (My favourite holiday, made for people like me. )

Thanks and all the best,
  Ed ("The DuinoSoar")

[DuinoSoar]

And I just noticed the one with the number 472-6849.  Back in the day, all phone numbers on the North side of the Saint John River in Fredericton, were prefixed with "472-".  Our home phone number had the last four digits starting with 6 and ending with 9 (so only the middle two of the last four digits were different).

Cool coincidence!

Ed ("The DuinoSoar")

[paul-f]

Wow!  Thanks for posting that, @paul-f. 

So those colours look to be slightly "off-white" to my old eyes, but maybe they are, indeed, a VERY light-grey.

You're welcome.

For an unbiased opinion on the color, I asked my resident expert, Chris, to look at them with no prompting.

We concluded that the cream color was in the areas that had the most sun exposure, so were most likely due to fading toward yellow. Some of the cards have a lighter circle around the edge, where the retainer covered part of the card, so the was less yellowing.

She pronounced the color on the back of the newer-appearing cards to be off-white with a touch of light gray -- "like cement" -- or lighter.

Of course, after several decades, even the backs are likely somewhat discolored from the original

[DuinoSoar]

Yep, it is definitely a "light-grey".  I expanded your photo and chose a card from it that looked "almost white" to me, did a small square MS Snipping tool capture from a blank area of that card, and then pasted it into MS paint against a white background.  The result is below.  The square light-grey area is from one of the cards in your photo.  Compare it to the white background.

[nil4k]

What fonts and sizes did you use for the various parts of the number card?  (Or perhaps you already mentioned that and I missed it?)

I created these in postscript code (a programming language for printers invented by adobe) because it lets you specify exact real-world sizes for things, so to translate for you

in postscript, 1pt = 1/72 inch

AREA
CODE is Helvetica-Bold, 21.5pt wide, 20pt tall
311 is Courier-Bold, 27pt wide, 33pt tall (courier was the closest match for the 1)
555-2368 is Helvetica, 31.5pt wide, 33pt tall

In the gray KL5 card, the fonts are all the same except:
KL is Helvetica-Bold, 31.5pt wide, 33pt tall

In all of this, I used the all number dialing 1962 advertisement with perspective correction to look like a flat view to overlay my printing on the real thing sized to a 1.5 inch disc so I could get as close as possible to what appeared in print.

In reality, I think I could get the best match on the phone number and area code with my IBM Selectric III typewriter with a "Letter Gothic" ball in it, but obviously that's harder to share in a printable format.

I will probably make a github.io page that allows you to customize my labels soon, but first I need to figure out how to make it all work in javascript on the client-side so that it can survive forever, unlike the older posts for label makers I found on this forum.  The workflow is currently edit the postscript file, then use ps2pdf14 to publish the pdf for everyone else.

[Gerd]

If it would be interesting, I also could provide Custom Dial Cards. I made them with Affinity Designer for my WE 500 Phones. Diameter is 38,1mm. The Number Cards from Germany are 47,7mm I think, would have to look.
These are only Examples.. If someone is interested pm me.
Best,
Gerd