The old phone you can still buy new today - Cortelco 250044

[@mwalsh5757]

Completely blew the grandkids’ minds when I called one of their mobile phones using our 1930s Danish rotary phone. 😂

[@louistournas120]

Old technology lasts. New technology is studied, researched to fail exactly after 2 y. We still have our refrigerator from 1984. There is a freezer, probably also from 1984. We have a rotary telephone, probably from 1980, but it is used rarely.

[@daewooparts]

Chances are that the old Danish rotory phone used licensed or actual Western Electric phone parts inside ,I also got several old European phones & found US made or Western Electric licensed parts& designs inside, same goes with Asian made phones from Korea & Japan

[@johndoe1909]

living in scandinavia it was a long time since we had any telephone network to connect these things to.... we all went mobile back in the 90:ies and by the 2010 the copper net was all but a memory.

[@BillAnt]

​@@louistournas120 - At home, I still have a fully working GoldStar (now LG) microwave from 1984 with its beautiful faux wood metal cabinet. lol It seems indestructible while I went through 3 modern Samsung ovens since 2000 at my work.

[@louistournas120]

@@BillAnt I sometimes I see Goldstar microwaves on the Price is right from the 198x. I like Holy,

[@sgtsquank]

The satisfying thunk of putting the phone back on the receiver is a feeling I miss. There was a whole tactile experience that is lost nowadays with touchscreens.

[@jr2904]

I miss pressing play on old tape decks and VCRs, and then hearing the mechanisms go to work. My mom has had an old stereo system, as a child I loved pressing the buttons, flipping switches, and turning the dials. Everything was made of metal and wood, no plastic. I remember asking my mom what "phono" meant because we only had cassette tapes at the time.

[@thiesenf]

You can still throw your smartphone onto a hard surface though... but RIP the electronics... :-)

[@gavincurtis]

The new phones make similar solid thunk when chucked into a wall. That's how I make wall phones today.

[@BilisNegra]

@@jr2904 Yeah, that must have been so satisfying. Still, I hope you're talking about the 70s at the latest since you certainly came about a crapload of flimsy, plasticky, and maladjusted stuff in the 80s (and late 70s, too) as soon as you left the realm of the best brands. At that point, the tactile experience could be one of fearing something was going wrong because that key didn't feel the same as you pressed it anymore and something could be about to break or be broken already.

[@yUm666]

​@@jr2904 What's stopping you from doing that even today? Used VCR players are darn cheap nowadays and you can find movies costing like 1$ or even free sometimes. I myself have never given up using VCR and never will as I enjoy too much using it. I do have DVD and Blu ray but in my opinion, they lack the soul and charm. Cassette decks however are not too cheap if you want decent one which has been serviced but quite affordable as long as you don't go for Nakamichi or other high-tech decks. Some old boomboxes you can find darn cheap. All in all I encourage everyone who miss those old devices getting into them again as a hobby. I myself need at least 50% of old devices around me or I don't feel comfortable.

[@jamesslick4790]

The bells on the older phones was often very much NEEDED to be absurdly LOUD, As many only had 1 phone and you needed to hear it ring where ever in the house you were. My entire childhood (1960's-70's) we only had 1 phone in a three bedroom house (in the living room). It was not until about 1979 when my mother "Splurged" and had a second phone installed (In her bedroom!).

[@cococock2418]

Very dumb statement. You act like the companies did this on purpose for the reason you gave, which isn’t true at all. They just were obnoxiously loud for no reason.

[@jamesslick4790]

@@cococock2418 What an IDITOTIC statement YOU just made. You sound like a 12 year old kid. 1, There weren't "COMPANIES" there was ONE company: Western Electric that developed the Model 500 telephone. and they licensed the design to other manufacturers who built the EXACT same design. 2, The Model 500 was released in fucking 1950. Only the VERY RICH would have had more than ONE phone in the house. Multiple phones in a house was uncommon until the fucking 1970s 3, You assume that engineers in 1950, (an era when NUCLEAR FUCKING WEAPONS were a thing) did shit for NO reason? Every feature of EVERY manufactured product HAS a REASON. Also, I have multiple relatives who worked for the American Telephone & Telegraph company. (AT&T for you KIDS). You know, THE owners of the "Bell System" until the 1984 breakup. Believe me, they did nothing for "no reason".

[@sinisterisrandom8537]

​@@cococock2418If you were not born during the period please shut your gap and if you were please shut it with a chemically red and yellow cloth. Thank You.

[@charlesdebarber2997]

A lot houses built between 1950-1975 have these little alcoves near the front door for the house phone to be. Folks have been repurposing those, but it is really common in homes of that era. They often were right beside stairs to upper/lower floors so it could be heard throughout the home.

[@LuckyFerals]

we had one phone in the kitchen and you had to be able to hear it from the basement of the house, the second story, as well as from out in the yard. remember that nobody had answering machines back in the day so you never wanted to miss a call.

[@jsciarri]

When I worked for Circuit City in the mid 2000s these Cortelco phones were at every cashier's station throughout the store. I managed to snag one that was destined to be tossed just before I left and still got it today. Mine is dated 2004 and was actually built in the USA and has the "operator" font above the zero button.

[@williamjones4483]

Way back in the day Cortelco went by its full name of Corinth Telephone Company. It was located in Corinth, Mississippi. Over time the name got shortened to what it is now.

[@misterwhipple2870]

You liberated it! Good for you! I worked for AT&T for 28 years and it hurt me to watch fine old Western Electric phones thrown into the trash when they became obsolete! Still perfectly good, but replaced with something newer. But it was a cardinal sin to liberate one! If you ever got caught, it was your a$$.

[@David_Phantom]

I love how the ring lingers into the next clip

[@bazzers]

You are right, that 7:46 ring is nicely edited!

[@gdoug1529]

I was at a customer's house a week or two ago and they still have a rotary phone connected, sitting on their roll top desk. They are still using it!

[@hrdcpy]

Geez. Service must cost more than a cheap MVNO wireless plan at this point in time.

[@FranklyPeetoons]

I use a few of the old-school AT&T phones plugged into my $10 per month VOIP line. Each phone needed a hardware box that cost maybe $40 each, and the central VOIP box cost about $80 or so (it's been years since I bought all the stuff). It's a good backup phone system, and way cheap. My old copper landline from ages ago cost over $50 per month. The VOIP system paid for itself in a few months.

[@hrdcpy]

@@FranklyPeetoons Thanks for sharing your insight. Copper is what I had in mind. 😁 ✌️

[@CptJistuce]

My folks have an old rotary phone connected to their landline. They USE modern(ish) cordless phones, but that old rotary has a ringer they can hear easily from anywhere in the house.

[@ericdunn8718]

It's the same thing at my grandma's house, she has an extra rotary phone connected to her landline in the basement of her house. It still works normally and rings loudly as it should when she gets a call (with a delay from the wall mount corded phone and cordless phones she has in other areas of the house), and it used to be in my grandpa's office until he passed. Weirdly it has a sticker with the name and number of a funeral home on it, which I have no idea how it got there or what purpose it serves, but it was on there long before he died (from what I remember, last time I saw it the sticker faded considerably).

[@GarthBeagle]

Everyone seems to want a red rotary phone nowadays, myself included 😄

[@marks-the-spot]

Ha! My first telephone as a teenager was a red Western Electric 500 dial telephone.

[@dvpierce248]

BATPHONE!

[@JohnSmith-xq1pz]

Nah nah nah nah nah nah batphone batphone batphone!

[@michealpersicko9531]

I have a red fake rotary phone that's touch tone

[@bigpapab]

I am lucky to have one.

[@dakotafarm1]

When I retired 10 years ago I felt nostalgic and bought a used blue, Western Electric standard rotary desk phone online, just like the one I had when I was going to high school. I had to modify one of the wires inside to adapt it for modern phone lines, which was very simple, I found the instructions online. My phone is marked 10-60 on the base and is in great shape. There is a sticker on the base that it was sold (used) by AT&T in 1983, when you could finally purchase phones in stores. It's solid, I enjoy dialing the numbers, I love the ringer, the handset makes me feel like I am really using a phone instead of shouting into a device that's too small for my hand, and I can hear voices perfectly on it. Of course I have to use a different phone for business calls ("press 1 to continue...", "enter your account number..." etc.), but this is my go-to phone and I am so glad I still can use a rotary phone with my landline company. 64 years old and it still works great - American workmanship at its best!

[@gusloader123]

Bingo!!! Agreed!

[@izntmac]

AT&T had a program in the early 1980s where people could actually buy the existing phones in their houses. Some had been there for years when they were sold.

[@snaredude56]

Cortelco was originally the Kellogg Switchboard company which was based in Chicago. They made phones that serviced a lot of the middle of the country. The Kellogg Red Bar is almost as iconic as the Western Electric 302, also known as the Lucy Phone. Kellogg eventually changed hands due to some mergers and changed its name to ITT, so your old phone was made by the same company technically. The 502 was Western Electric's replacement for the old 302, but there were so many 302s still in service that they came up with a new outer shell, number plate and dial ring that looked like a 502, but fit on a 302 chassis so they could refurbish the older, but still serviceable, 302s and make them look like the new 502. They were the 5302 model. They usually retain the old 302 handset and the body is a bit shorter than a 502 so they are easy to spot.

[@jamesslick4790]

I have a 5302 (as well as a 302 and a 500). the 5302 is not often seen these days!

[@dougbrowning82]

Both the 302 and the 500 were designed for Western Electric by George Lum. The 302 was WE's first self contained desk telephone. Previous desk phones were just cradle sets that were tied to a wall mounted sub set that contained the ringer and network components, such as a 202 paired with a 634.

[@jamesslick4790]

@@dougbrowning82 Yep!

[@michaelbenardo5695]

I have one of the later 5302s. It has a so-called GF handset. It is a G handset with F style capsules and matching caps. Works perfectly.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

@@jamesslick4790 I have one!

[@hyperturbotechnomike]

In Germany, we had a similar phone, when the phone infrastructure was owned by Deutsche Post. They sold an iconic green touch type phone for decades.

[@giannischmitt5788]

IT was the fetap 611. Fetap Stands for fernsprechtischapperat

[@Space_Reptile]

Not just green, you could also get orange and white ones, tho they might have been for companies or officals only, they are plenty on the used market today

[@mel816]

In the Philippines the Siemens FeTap phones were also the phones provided by former monopoly PLDT throughout the 1980's and 1990's

[@Crazy_Borg]

@@giannischmitt5788 Up until the late 90s, we had a nice grey fewap 611. Fernsprechwandapparat. 😄

[@ianhomerpura8937]

​@@mel816 can I still find one today?

[@blautens]

Model 500s and their predecessors were made to last through many deployments. When a customer moved, the phones would be returned to Western Electric for testing/refurbishment. Since the equipment was always owned by ATT (or the local bell) and leased to the customer, making quality equipment made sense. My father worked for Southern Bell for 32 years, and as a kid I would hang out with him and learned what I could about phones. I would get some "hand me down" test equipment, could climb a pole and change service to another pair, and our house had a phone in every room (which was a crazy luxury in the 60's). I saved every years flip card catalog with styles and colors of phones customers could order. I always thought I would start and end my career with a local bell like he did, but then...1984.

[@taofanarchy96-renzomaracas14]

“but then… 1984.” Sounds Orwellian.

[@blautens]

@@taofanarchy96-renzomaracas14 lol - you're right. I forget not everyone remembered the AT&T breakup in 1984 as having marked their lives like mine. My bad.

[@straightpipediesel]

There was another reason: private utilities operate on a cost-plus basis. Their profits are a percent of their cost, as set by state regulators. Raising costs raises profits, so the Bell System constantly pushed system reliability as something that was necessary. After deregulation when consumers had a choice, it turned out they didn't care, and went and bought cheaper plastic phones that suited their needs. Today, consumers still don't care about the 5 9's reliability that AT&T pushed: they're happy with cell phones with dead spots giving something like 98% reliability.

[@jimlocke9320]

My best recall is that the phone companies didn't charge for service calls, even if the the problem was clearly the customer's fault. If a child used the handset as a hammer to pound a coffee table, they wanted the coffee table to break and the handset to survive, avoiding a service call. On the other hand, I do recall a good friend telling about his experience taking down a wall telephone to paint a wall and then being unsuccessful when he tried to reconnect the wires. A phone company technician connected the wires correctly at no charge to my friend. There were telephone refurbishing centers, where telephones taken out of service were cleaned, tested and sent out to be put back in service. The handset and body of the phone looked brand new. I read that these facilities had a major problem with roaches that had found homes inside the telephones. I don't know how they got rid of the roaches before the refurbished telephones were shipped to be installed in new customers' homes! Telephone companies typically charged $1 a month for extension telephones that may have cost $10 to manufacture. While the extra charge was a lucrative source of revenue, customers overlooked some overhead expenses. With more phones in the home, residents tended to spend more time on the phone, requiring more central office equipment to support flat rate lines. Extra phones meant more times that a phone would be left off hook, resulting in additional operator time for doing "busy verifications". Telephone theft became more common and customers connected the stolen phones. The phone companies had a method of testing for extra ringers and would send a repairman if extra ringers were detected. Customers learned to disconnect the ringers on unauthorized extension telephones.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

@@blautens All of us over a certain age remember!

[@cjc363636]

I'm a mid-60s kid, and in the 1970s our 'Ma-Bell' phone was the wall mount version of that, in the center hallway with a LONG cord attached to the receiver. And the ringer was like a fire alarm going off!! VWestlife, thanks for the phone memories!!

[@soundguydon]

Growing up, I was at the tail-end of Ma-Bell and the beginning of the breakup. We had one mounted on our kitchen wall next to the table & after the breakup, Dad installed a cordless & put phone jacks in all the rooms. My grandmother, great-aunt and great-grandmother still had a shared party line into the late 80's !! She had to listen for her custom ring, and if she wanted to make a call, she picked up and listened first to make sure the line was free.

[@shananagans5]

Ah yes, that's the 1974 mobile phone. A chord long enough to reach from the kitchen wall to the living room couch.

[@voidfilan5055]

We also had a black rotary wall phone 📞 in our kitchen from 1963 until my dad sold the house in 1986

[@johnobrien8773]

My grandparents had a black rotary phone until the end of the century.

[@misterwhipple2870]

My mom had one of those super-long coiled cords which could stretch for about 25 feet from the kitchen wall phone to her bedroom and one day she was talking to her friend and she heard a strange sound: grunts coming from the hallway. She got up to see what it was, and she found my brother, who was trying to pinch the cord off like a garden hose. It didn't work, of course. He was an aspiring juvenile delinquent and I think he was the inspiration for Bart Simpson.

[@user-vn2pi7qr5y]

God, this makes me want to have a lanline again.

[@quayzar1]

I bought an Xlink to attach my ITT 500 to my cellphone via bluetooth.

[@DripDripDrip69]

Some fiber modems have RJ-11 port and VoIP function, if your modem has that contact your ISP to enable VoIP service, then plug an analog telephone into that RJ-11 port

[@applegal3058]

The telemarketers and scam calls made me give up on landlines years ago. No way of easily blocking numbers I didn't want to call me.

[@RXSVN_2]

Polycom (or ObiHai) Obi 202 with Google Voice is a good way to go. It's a two line device. It can also be programmed to accept pulse dial from rotary phones if need be. Get a OBIWifi add-on to go with it, trust me you'll love it.

[@Inventure751]

​@@DripDripDrip69been wondering if the same could be done with a fax machine

[@davidmarquardt9034]

Yep, Western Electric was the manufacturing arm of the Bell System up until the 80's. The Bakelite plastic used for the handset and base was so durable in the 60's, that a secteraty in a New York office clubbed a man in the head who was trying to rob the office, and cracked his skull. The reason they were made so well and heavy was they were the property of Western Electric, and were built to last 50, 60, 75 years, going from one house to another with a minimum of maintenance. The rotary dial phones actually had silver and gold contacts (in VERY small quantities) as silver and gold are the top 2 electrical conductors (copper is 3rd). Although they were heavy and used some expensive materials, in the long run they were cheaper to operate than the disposable crap we have today.

[@edbouhl3100]

Yes, those old rotary phones were as solid as rocks. Pretty much a permanent feature like the plumbing pipes unless you made a major effort to get something else from the owner, which was the phone company.

[@xaenon]

Yes, back when people understood the principles of 'buy QUALITY, buy ONCE'. Of course, today, 'buy quality' isn't really an option anymore (at least, in consumer electronics), because manufacturers realized that "Buy quality, buy ONCE' is detrimental to their bottom line. They very much prefer you buy again and again and again.

[@okbridges]

You can actually adjust the ringer to a position which effectively turns it off, but you must remove the top to do so. There is a spring metal stop that you pull back and it allows you to turn the volume control wheel one click further in the quiet direction. It basically puts the bells so close together that the hammer can't move. If afterwards you decide you want to hear the phone ring again, all you need to do is turn the phone over and rotate the wheel in the loud direction. You'll hear a click as the wheel goes to the minimum volume position, and if you try to turn it back to the silent position, you won't be able to, not without taking the cover back off and pulling that spring stop back again. This was a feature on purpose described in the 500 service manual.

[@keithkneeland6849]

When I was a newborn my father took their phone apart and removed the bells. He said they still knew someone was calling cause the mechanism that struck the bells would make a vibration, but since as you pointed out there was no way to turn off the bell completely, this was his way of making sure no one woke me up after my mom spent 2 hours getting me to fall asleep! 😁

[@michaelbenardo5695]

There is a way. Just lift that tab that blocks the volume adjuster's softest position, then slide the volume control further over. The bells will be too soft to wake anybody.

[@keithkneeland6849]

@@michaelbenardo5695 Well, I’m in my 40’s now so it’s a little late but it’s good to know there was a much easier way! So my parents weren’t the only one to face that issue I’m guessing! lol. All kidding aside that’s good info to have if people have a phone like this and don’t want to rip it apart to quiet the bells down. 👍🏼

[@GTIFabric]

I've still got my old rotary hanging in the garage in the same spot since 1984.

[@btx5740]

Still have a land line w/ 2 old school phones in the house that work

[@applescruff1969]

The ring definitely sounds way better on the OG. Really love these phones. Wish I could still use one.

[@thomase13]

What’s stopping you?

[@quayzar1]

@@thomase13 They probably don't have a landline and don't know about Bluetooth adapters like the Xlink.

[@applescruff1969]

@@thomase13 I don't have a landline, and haven't for years.

[@St0rmcrash]

There's a version of the cortelco with the correct ringer, the model ends in M in stead of MD and is made in the USA and built much more like a "classic" 2500 than this cheapened one made in China

[@japanfanatic1415]

you can use them if you use voip box

[@golfguy25]

Fun fact: The Rotary version of this phone was still produced until January of 2007!

[@dennisp.2147]

In the US no less...

[@lesterawilson3]

They're still very much in use - but mostly in commercial / industrial applications. In fact, a few years ago I replaced about 100 analog wall phones at a nuclear power plant with, you guessed it, Cortelco 2544 wall analog phones. Even though we have an extensive wired/wireless network through the plant, we still need phones that'll function in the event of a network outage and for safety reasons. That and the existing analog telephone lines didn't need to be replaced as they were still operational - saving the time and expense of running CAT6 to where the phones are. In this case they're fed by three Cisco analog voice gateways (144 lines each) in a separate part of the facility with redundant fiber network connections, redundant power feeds and battery backup. And there's analog phones in places like the control rooms, etc... again in case of network problems. They'll least 20-30+ years and will continue to operate when more modern stuff does not or cannot.

[@robertbarker5981]

The Bucket residence, the lady of the house speaking!

[@t0raneko]

It's boo-KAY!

[@mardus_ee]

She had a white slimline telephone with buttons... and periwinkles :-)

[@Lion-dr7uv]

@@mardus_ee And room for a pony

[@rickeymh]

I used to work for a telco manufacturer in 1980. A standard touchtone telephone costs $1.10 to make while a rotary phone was only $.69. These were all made in Mississippi, USA back then.

[@Buzzygirl63]

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, and we had a dial phone just like this in our house. Very stout and pretty much indestructible. I recall the breakup of "Ma Bell" and how all of a sudden there were so many different phones on the market that you could purchase from regular stores. My folks bought a cordless phone very soon thereafter, but we never got rid of the older phone; it just got relegated to use in a spare bedroom. Telephone technology is something that I look back on and say that I don't know of any other modern home technology that has changed so immensely, yet stayed so important over the years - unless you want to count home computers, and cellphones have often replaced those in daily life as well.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

I got rid of my cell phone when I retired 4 years ago.

[@teasea3152]

After I saw this video I dug out my old pushbutton desk phone that looks exactly like the one in the video. It's a little more old school than yours. It says ITT on the back of the phone under the handset cradle. On the inside of the handset there's no volume switch like the one in the video, but it does say made in USA. I unscrewed rhe mouthpiece and it has the carbon microphone. On the bottom it has the adjusting knob for the koudness of the bell and a sticker that says maufactured by Cortelco in Corinth Mississippi. It says ITT is a trademark of ITT Corporation used under license. Also on that sticker is the name of the person who inspected the telephone after assembly and the words Made in USA With Pride. It's a model 250044-MBA-20M with a manufacturing date of Sept. 1996. I guess it still works, I don't have a landline anymore to check it.

[@emdxemdx]

In 1965 (yes, nineteen sixty five), I lived where the first ever DTMF CO was installed in Canada: HUnter in Montréal. So the first phone I used in my life was already a DTMF phone... The keypad was in a round plate that fit the normal rotary case, and had only 10 keys, no * nor # keys. This had an added bonus: whenever my mother wanted the doctor to come and see us when we were sick, he would come on the double when called, look at us then ask "do you mind if I make a phone call"? Because he lived outside the HUnter CO service area, he could not have DTMF service... Alas, when we moved out in 1976, we could not get DTMF until 1982 so we were stuck with rotary phones. What a disgrace! And even when it was available, it was a makeshift device in the CO that converted the DTMF tones to pulses. What a travesty!

[@mel816]

And now we have the opposite situation where you need an adapter to convert the pulses into DTMF tones in order to use rotary phones on modern VoIP connections😄

[@BoSmith7045]

I'm more fascinated that doctors used to make house calls. It would have been nice instead of being tossed in a backseat with a puke bucket and taken to a military hospital or clinic.

[@gavinbennett2302]

I work at an amusment park and we have these at every ride, restaraunt, carnival game, behind the scenes area, etc. Only place we have nice office phones is in our offices lol

[@DeathInTheSnow]

I love dedicated devices that don't use batteries. It was quite common in the UK to still be able to use the landline if the electricity went out. That was until everybody switched to digital handsets, which required a base unit. They would get knocked out with the power. 😅

[@CptJistuce]

Same here in the US. The phone system had its own power supply.

[@worldcomicsreview354]

I remember my parents and brother went somewhere but I didn't, then there was a power cut in freezing conditions. My granny called me to say she still had power at her house, it was right on the edge of a different "electricity area" or whatever, so only her street had the lights on.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

I still have my home phones and being a stubborn old man, REFUSE to get rid of them.

[@Sashazur]

@@worldcomicsreview354We had an ice storm in our neighborhood a few years ago. It took days to get power back and the houses across the street got it back two days sooner than we did - we were really jealous!

[@MrDuncl]

This weekend I got an email from BT saying my area will soon be changed to VOIP. In the Q&As it says that if there is a power cut I can still use my mobile. When we had a power cut about two years ago the cellphone signals disappeared as quickly as the power. Using an old phone and yellow pages I called the electricity board and got a very useful recorded message saying they were aware of a county wide power cut, were working on it and hoped to restore power in the next five hours.

[@zg-it]

I bought one old one for my niece as a play phone. But it works. So once in awhile I get a call from my brother's house line and the classic fuzzy voice comes through! It's great.

[@aaron74]

It's so neat how these "antique" phones are still compatible with an ATA (analog telephone adapter) that you can use with a VoIP service. I might get one of these old phones and a cheap VoIP service just for the nostalgia. I miss having long phone conversations with the standard handset/receiver, they were soooooo much more comfortable to hold, or lean your head on, than a cell phone!

[@AustinHollingerOfficial]

only a few of the analog telephone adapters will actually give the bell ringer enough voltage to make it fully function. You can indeed still use them, and I did for quite a while but I had a couple cordless phones because the 2500 wouldn't ring by itself.

[@chrislj2890]

We still have our old AT&T princess style touch pad phone from the '80s in a spare room. I remember as a kid in the '50s in Dayton, Ohio we had phone numbers with two letters for the exchange and then three numbers, then eventually they started area codes. One thing about the old phones was that they were so sturdy they could be used for a murder weapon, as seen in tv and movies, lol.

[@jsciarri]

You can still find some old business buildings that have the older two digit letter exchange written on the outside wall.

[@chrislj2890]

@@jsciarri It sure made it easier to memorize all of the important numbers. Now with a smart phone I have difficulty remembering my own number.

[@jimlocke9320]

I grew up in an area with 5 digit telephone numbers. When we were upgraded to the North American numbering plan with 7 digit local numbers, they prefixed FRanklin to our number, where we dialed the FR before the 5 digits. The FRanklin was supposed to help us get used to 2 extra digits. Eventually, the FRanklin was replaced by the digits 37. There's a comedy skit from Stan Freeburg where a character named Ned Numeral introduces all number dialing and the phone companies are roasted for taking away the colorful names.

[@chrislj2890]

@@jimlocke9320 I keep thinking we had a BA prefix for Baldwin, but I wouldn't bet money on it with my memory.

[@Sashazur]

My dad’s office phone number in Manhattan in the 70s started with PL for Plaza. I was born in 1962 but only remember 7 digit numbers, with the 3 digit area code only added for long distance.

[@talon262]

The clips from the OG NCIX Tech Tips with Linus was *chef's kiss*...

[@Chuckles8732]

Boot camp Linus isn't real, he can't hurt you. BOOT CAMP @LinusTechTips ISN'T REAL, HE CAN'T HURT YOU

[@Eliotime3000]

Honestly, I didn't expect to see modern "analog" landline telephones made in these times. Even much more with the lack of interest of dial-based ones. The last time that I've seen in operation was in the late 90's in a hospital. Jeez!

[@jmi5969]

Do they still have telephone lines in the US? In my country these remain in older buildings - if the owners are still willing to pay (I cancelled mine twenty years ago). But all the new properties are built without it, just a fiber data trunk.

[@Xyspade]

​​@@jmi5969POTS (real) phone lines remain in very rural areas, but most people who still use landlines are on VoIP by now. Also worth noting you don't have to get VoIP service from your ISP; you could opt for something like Ooma or MagicJack instead for mich cheaper.

[@lance_374]

@@jmi5969 My parents had an actual landline until 2020 when they got a deal to switch to voip and upgrade the internet speed and pay less. Still using the same phone from the 2000s and it works as far as I know exactly the same as the original landline did. Just got a new modem that has cable in and ethernet and phone lines out. Now it is through a fiber ISP but it otherwise works exactly the same. I'm not sure if there is a quality difference.

[@chrisa2735-h3z]

@@jmi5969yes they do! We still have ours!

[@cubcadet122]

@@jmi5969 Most people here stopped using them in the 2010s unfortunately.

[@2dfx]

Fun fact - the Nortel Meridian 1 and later CS1000 of PBXs still use this model to program an analog line. When specifying the set type - it's "500" regardless of what sort of phone is on the other end!

[@lesterawilson3]

LD 20 NEW 500 12 0 0 2 DN 2345 etc...

[@pauld6967]

Thanks for this video. I still have my landline unit from decades ago. It is a great thing to have during power outages since it derives it's power from the phone line instead of the city's power grid. I had one in my old office too. My co-workers mocked me as being old-fashioned until the piwer went out and I was able to call the power company to report the outage. Of course, people could use their cell phones but eventually, those batteries will be drained of power in a long duration outage.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

Plus, if the power failure knocked out the cell towers, they CAN'T use their cell phones.

[@pauld6967]

@@michaelbenardo5695 Yes indeed. 😎

[@Sashazur]

@@michaelbenardo5695 cell towers have backup batteries but they don’t last more than a day or two, or even less.

[@MrDuncl]

@@michaelbenardo5695 Which it probably will. When we had a wide area power cut a couple of years ago the cellphone signals disappeared as quickly as the power.

[@bob4analog]

3:50 I remember these carbon mics would sometimes tend to have low fuzzy sound. So I'd give the handset a few good whacks on the mic end and this would fix the problem. This would loosen the carbon granules that got impacted in the mic. Neat little trick i learned from a telephone tech. 😉

[@newjerseybill3521]

Same here, a good whack on the desk, and good as new.

[@bob4analog]

😁👍

[@gwesco]

I worked for a hospital corporation from the early 70's until 2006. We had our own phone systems and I've installed or repaired thousands of both the 500 rotary and the 2500 TT phones. At that time the phones were made in the US and had a lot of quality. I've seen "name brand" modern phones that are just a cheap piece of plastic and not nearly as sturdy or repairable. The "obnoxiously loud" ringer was on purpose. Original switching equipment used mechanical relays that were tied up for the entire ringing cycle and they wanted people to answer promptly so that equipment could serve another ringing phone.

[@NeonSonOfXenon]

I'm from the 90's, and i don't think I've ever seen one of these up close, but it's interesting how it's shape is so iconic (especially the handset) that it's still used to represent telephone today

[@St0rmcrash]

Also fun fact since your 500 looks to have been made by ITT, Cortelco is actually the current day descendant of the ITT telephone manufacturing business, so those two phones were somewhat made by the same company

[@warphammer]

Came here to say this.

[@brianleeper5737]

He got the Chinese one. They still make a US-made version that costs about $20-$30 more and isn't sold on Amazon (at least I couldn't find it there---had to get it from CDW). It's manufactured at their factory in Corinth, MS and it's much closer in design to the original 2500 set. It's listed right on their website under "Basic Telephones".

[@St0rmcrash]

@@brianleeper5737 Yep, look for model number ending in "M" instead of "MD" (ex 250044-VBA-20M)

[@roachtoasties]

I have some of those old telephones buried in a closet in my house. I'm sure they'll still work if I plug them in. Those were the days. Back in the 60's and 70's there were basically two lines of telephones. Ones with rotary dials and ones with touchtone dials. Touchtone cost a bit extra, and you were a modern household if you had one. In the 80's I was a TSPS telephone operator for an AT&T subsidiary. Jobs that basically don't now exist. I worked there for a while. They didn't like me. I didn't like them. I won't go into why I ended up no longer working there, but it wasn't cordial. No biggie. I went on to a successful I.T. career elsewhere. Good video.

[@stevenjlovelace]

It took me a second to recognize the guy at the end. He looks so young!

[@oldhouseredux7733]

Great video as always, Kevin. It should be noted that the later models of the Western Electric 500 handset DID have a potentiometer for volume (available for an extra amount per month.) My daily driver for making calls from home is a turquoise 500 rotary, sporting a date code of June 1979, with a volume adjustment knob where the volume switch is on the Corelco. I’m hardcore, I still pay the obnoxious cost per month for a copper POTS line.

[@coolsnake1134]

Lucky. Copper pots lines we're done away with in my area since like 2006 and everything is now voice-over IP, the closest you would get to copper pots in terms of reliability is Verizon FiOS and plugging your house's existing wiring into the Verizon ONT and getting the battery back up for it

[@fmphotooffice5513]

Excellent presentation. I have a memory of ~1975, I went with my parents downtown to exchange the kitchen phone from a rotary dial to a touchstone phone. It was a big deal. I remember the old phone went into a giant canvas "hotel hamper on casters" piled with old phones. I have a rotary princess, a slimline, and a few others in storage. HINT: You can easily but carefully add ballast in wax or modeling clay to the handset and epoxy some fishing sinkers in the body of the cheap phone. Works great. Just stuff some tissue paper on the ends of the handset so that ballast doesn't short out something. I think I remember seeing someone connect 2 of these together with nothing but a big battery and some switches. Hmmm. Enjoy.

[@davidg4288]

You can connect 2 analog phones and a battery all in series and talk through the phones. They won't ring though. For that you need a ring generator, 90 volts 20 Hz in the US. Or you can buy a "phone line simulator" from Viking Electronics. You'd use that to set up a "ring down" circuit, for example if you want a phone at the gate to ring another at the security desk but not have anything connected to the telephone system.

[@brentpodshow]

You never disappoint…. One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingies

[@MarchMountain]

I'm 29 and my grandparents to this day have one of the rotary ones in their house. My dad has told me a story of growing up in the 80s. He had a friend that was training to be a pilot and they dropped one of them out of a plane somewhere over northern California just for the heck of it.

[@efficiencygaming3494]

I still smile any time I encounter one of these telephones in the wild. In the early 2010s, one of my local grocery stores had a black Model 2500 sitting on one of the counters for anyone who needed to use it. Around that same time, I also found a rotary Model 500 that had unfortunately been relegated to use as a theatre prop. I wish more of these would remain in use. It doesn't seem fair that this 20th-century icon known for its reliability would be surpassed by technology with unreliability engineered into it...

[@michaelbenardo5695]

Hardly nothing electronic/computerized is truly reliable or truly rugged.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

I have about 15 "classic" phones and I refuse to get rid of them. Some are pretty rare examples.

[@MrDuncl]

I sold a similar phone (picked up at a car boot sale) to a model agency (of the type that does adverts in Vogue). I guess they wanted to use it as a prop.

[@AlienFrequency]

My folks had one of those rotary phones up and running in their bedroom through the late 90's. We moved, and that phone stayed there.

[@mikedavid7168]

Wow my whole childhood just flashed in front of my eyes. Thank you so much for this video.

[@GlenfinnanForge]

A couple years ago I decided I wanted a rotary phone on the wall like we had when I was a kid. It took some work, but now I have a functioning VoIP rotary phone. It’s not used very often, but the service is so inexpensive I keep it hooked up just in case. Boy, when that ringer goes off, you know it!

[@multitalent8]

Watching this I really miss this type of telephone. I miss slamming down the handset! 😅 Thanks Kevin!

[@Gearset807]

You can still buy the old 1950s phones online that have been reconditioned to like new. I purchased an old model 500 for my home and I am extremely happy with it though you are going to pay around $200. They even color sand, the plastic to make it look new. That’s why the higher price. The only drawback is it requires the old copper phone line to operate which I have, but they are slowly being phased out.

[@don_cc123]

Most of the VOIP phone adapters (Ooma, etc.) are perfectly happy driving a Model 500, including correct operation of the ringer!

[@Holabirdsupercluster]

After my dad died in 2011 (he was a big work traveler, always with a laptop from the earliest days), I couldn't figure out why every old computer bag of his had this tangle of what looked to me like very short and thin ethernet cables and now all these years later your video explains their use. Amazing

[@TheCinnaCat]

I was born in the mid-90s so I didn't grow up with rotary phones. However, I've had an interest in old technology for a good chunk of my life which was probably kicked off by finding a 1940s 5-tube Admiral radio on the ground in an alley once when I was a kid. I have two 500s, the newer of the two being from around the same timeframe as the one you showed in this video. The reason I have two of them is because the first one I bought had some water damage on and the bell didn't work. The second one had damage on the plastic shell but the bell worked, so I just took the top part and mechanism off of the 1st one and connected it to the board on the 2nd one, and that phone now sits in my front room, attached into my in-house phone server with an adapter. It 100% works and rings whenever anyone calls me!

[@MrDuncl]

If you find old phones interesting look at the old exchange technology. A predecessor of the company I work for used to employ thousands of people making electromechanical Strowger telephone exchanges.

[@TheCinnaCat]

@@MrDuncl I've seen videos! A bunch of electromechanical contacts that route phone calls, basically the inverse of how the pulse dialing works from the other end. As a (fairly young) network engineer, the fact that routing was done with physical switches at one point blows my mind!

[@wendysremix]

In '84 customers had the option to keep their existing lease which still exists today in the form of "QLT Leasing Service". You can still lease rotary phones for $5 a month through a spin off company of AT&T

[@paulwarner5395]

Thanx for the video. When i worked in the industry we had a room with sample phones from around the world in it and in it was a WE500 set made about 1948/49 so the base said. I suspect it was a preproduction sample as it was all black with dark brown handset and line cards that were covered by a fabric braided material. It had never been used. I had my self up until 1995 when I moved house a early 1960s White 500 set and a blue Princes phone.. They got lost somewhere in the house move. Never did get my hands on an original WE 2500 set. Those original 500 and 2500 sets sure did have a beautiful ringer sound and they were built strong judging by the number of 500 sets thrown around in movies and TV programs.

[@Dee_Just_Dee]

Something that's absolutely wild to me is that my parents still have a secondhand Model 500 sitting around, and it can still make outgoing calls, even though they rolled their landline phone service into their cable internet package via a VoIP box years and years ago. That's right - their VoIP box actually supports pulse dialing! 🤯

[@michaelbenardo5695]

Problem with VOIP is that it uses a modem. That means a power failure means a phone failure as well.

[@eDoc2020]

@@michaelbenardo5695 Back when these digital systems were getting rolled out they _all_ had a battery backup good for at least 8 hours. I believe it was a regulatory requirement that was later dropped. Not as good as a well-maintained CO battery but much better than literally nothing.

[@sf-dn8rh]

My folks had a model 500 circa 1971, same as the rotary you have there. We also had a turquoise one from 1969. In 79 the navy housing we lived in in San Diego got the updated plugs so the phones were no longer hardwired, but the standard plug in style. We then were giving a turquoise blue (70s era disco blue) replacing the tan phone, and also a Snoopy phone circa 1977, we got used (demo model unit )

[@Sashazur]

Remember when phones had a pulse/tone switch? For years you had to pay extra to get touch tone service from your local phone company, so push button phones had a switch so you could still use them even without touch tone service. With the switch on pulse, pressing the buttons made clicks instead of beeps. You didn’t have to wait between button presses for the clicks to finish, it buffered them. The whole “press 1 to leave a message, press 0 to speak to the operator” stuff didn’t become a thing until almost everyone had touch tone capability.

[@MrDuncl]

The first pushbutton phones sold in the U.K. were pulse only and didn't even have a switch. I bought a new phone in the 1990s when I started using telephone banking and got fed up with the unreliable voice recognition.

[@eDoc2020]

For years is an understatement. I remember our host Kevin made a video switching from traditional copper to fiber-based phone line and trying dial-up on each. IIRC this was in 2009 and the "before" test was with pulse dialing because even that late it cost more to use tone dialing.

[@okaro6595]

I doubt it was a service you bought. That would be weird. Some areas just did not have touch tone service. The witch allowed you to use touch tones after the call had been established to send information.

[@eDoc2020]

@@okaro6595 No, it was very much a service that you paid extra for, at least in certain markets. The practice made sense back when you needed to rent your phone (because it changed which phones they put in your house) and for some reason they continued the practice even after the breakup. AFAIK the fee was only present for existing customers who were locked into old rate plans, I'm sure anybody who signed up after the fact wouldn't have the option to go pulse-only.

[@syntaxerorr]

My mom worked for a company that produced a clone of this phone. She worked out a deal that she could take home parts for the handset and I could assemble them and get paid. It was a supper cool deal for me when I was a teenager in 1998.

[@sinistan1002]

I grew up 1/2 in the 70's and 1/2 in the 80's. I remember we had both, the dial version in the 70's probably to late 70's, and then the touch tone version in the late 70's and up to probably the mid or late 90's still had one working in a bed room. And some hang on the wall versions a few of which still have today. I remember those screw on caps, and taking the phones apart as a little kid 😄 Also fun fact, there was a transitional time where some phones had both touch and pulse or rotary mode. The dial version accomplished that mechanically by literally picking up and hanging up the phone, the pulse did it electronically. At one point you could also manually do this with a touch only version, just by tapping the hang up the correct # of times to match the number, i.e you dial 3 or 5, you manually tap the hangup 3 or 5 times, etc for each number

[@michaelbenardo5695]

The ones with Pulse/Tone were Asian-made cheap copies.

[@Reparaturkanal]

5:40 - At home in 1989 we had a Tritel Sils phone, introduced 5 years earlier. In 1991, in the U.S., the vintage AT&T model 100 telephone was introduced. And of course, the Sils was both wall-mount and desktop compatible.

[@victorm.photovic9983]

I had two friends in middle school and we made it to high school together… you remind me of them. They were cool, knew a lot about everything. One became a machinist, and the other went on to bigger and better things in the military. He joined the Air Force, never to be heard from again. I joined the Navy and even then I didn’t have the clearance to hang out with him anymore. I’m 66, and as a kid w had those rotary dial phones in the house.🤣

[@Canleaf08]

The cortelco was my phone when I studied. Such a cool phone, it even worked in Germany. I refused to get another phone. This was 2009-2016 or so. The Cortelco reminded me about US hotel rooms of the 90s.

[@Sashazur]

I think as soon as the US switched to “buy your own phone” in the 80s, all of those phones you could get also worked in Europe, or at least in Italy where my grandparents lived. You just needed an adapter plug to convert from the wall to the modular jack on the phone. I remember being bringing a phone in my suitcase to Italy since they were a lot cheaper in the US.

[@davidg4288]

@@Sashazur Conversely my mom had a French phone which I hooked up illegally to the Bell System in US. It was heavy and clunky but looked really fancy. US style 4 pin phone plugs were available at the local electronics stores "for use on private networks only" nudge nudge wink wink. We had a legit Bell system extension we could plug in there if the phone company ever needed to come into the house. This was before you could use your own phone, it had to be theirs.

[@datassetteuser356]

I am amazed that these are still in production. Incredible!

[@JSRphones]

It may not quite match the original's quality, but this modern version does give the newer generations a chance to have the experience for themselves... and possibly many later generations to come.

[@CODMarioWarfare]

Those Cortelco phones were in every room of my high school in 2016, and are presumably still there

[@thecooldude9999]

Great video! One correction - the design was licensed to other companies by Western Electric, but WE continued to make their own phones and supply the Bell System with them until the mid-80s. Other companies made the licensed phones for independent phone companies, and later, consumers, to buy. They weren’t made for Western Electric. You should compare your ITT 500 with a WE one too. You’ll find that the WE ones are even more overbuilt, even the ringer volume control is metal!

[@williamjones4483]

Exactly! After World War II AT&T was allowed to resume manufacturing of telephone equipment and consumer sets were made at various "works" as Western Electric called its manufacturing facilities. However, in 1948 it commenced building a factory in Indianapolis, IN that began manufacturing consumer telephones in 1950. Western Electric Indianapolis Works was in operation until 1985. Many former Western Electric plants were demolished, but Indianapolis Works building is still intact and has been repurposed.

[@kevinmhilding]

Exactly right. I was gong to post the same information. ITT did not make phones for WE. It was always my personal opinion that the ITT phones were a cheap copy of the real deal.

[@shawnpatrick1877]

I always found these old phones to be more comfortable to use for long conversations than modern cell phones. Even the "newer," home phones that were cordless were just more comfortable to hold to the ear for long periods of time. I don't know why KZbin recommended this video to me, but it makes me miss having a home phone.

[@michaelfolino8414]

I'm from Canada and am in my mid 40s and still have 2 rotary dial phones, one in the kitchen and the other in the bedroom. Ours was made by NT Northern Telecom (they were property of the phone company) and looks the same as yours except ours doesn't say OPERATOR on 0. The dates on mine are 1966 and 1972 and were from our family camp as we had a jack installed outside so we wouldn't have to run into the camp with sandy feet once we discovered it was "our ring"...party line. For whatever reason when this phone rings I have immediate attention and that's why I keep one in the bedroom. If someone calls in the middle of the night I'll pick up that phone within half a ring. Also, I keep my cellphone in the kitchen on charge over night and anyone that knows me knows to call the house phone after 8 and NEVER call after 11 unless it's serious.

[@01chippe]

But isn’t renewing your car warranty at 3 AM considered important? 😂

[@michaelfolino8414]

@@01chippe No, I also have a Panasonic cordless phone that blocks numbers, plus my number is unlisted.

[@jimlocke9320]

The phone companies charged extra for an unlisted number. This charge helped defrayed the cost of handling "free" calls to "information" (later "directory assistance") when customers could not find the number in the phone book. I think the operators would tell customers that the number was unlisted and then have to get customers to understand why they could not give out the number. They also had to handle emergency calls to the unlisted numbers.

[@michaelbenardo5695]

Bell Canada.

[@charlescheeld4767]

Wow thanks for posting this. I was a phone guy in the 80s and installed and repaired 1,000s 500s and 2500s. Unfortunately, I also threw just as many away when they got replaced. Wish I kept one or two.

[@cjeffcoat2]

On the model 500, open the phone and behind the bell is a little metal tab. You can bend this slightly back and this will provide you with an extra notch using the knob on the bottom to turn the bell off. Believe it or not, this was a feature the phone companies offered and charged extra for.

[@MarkoVuckovic32]

I was born in 2000 but we still have a rotary phone that is fully functional. I don't even know exactly how old it is but it has to be from the 80s because that is when my grandparents finished building our house and moved in with my dad. We don't use it anymore but it just sits there as a decoration basically. That phone might be the reason why I enjoy watching these videos about technologies older than me. I maybe wouldn't even know about this channel if it wasn't for that phone😀

[@BollingHolt]

I've got one that's older than that that used to be in my house when I was a kid. The receiver sits on the rotary dial, but the bell ringing system was elsewhere, and it all sat in a "phone nook" that houses used to have... My house was built in 1928. I'm not sure if this phone was from 1928 or later, but I remember using it well when I was just a little kid. What's left of it is on display in my home.

[@thecooldude9999]

Cortelco also makes a 2500 set that is USA made, vs the Chinese one shown here. I haven’t seen the inside of a recent USA model, but I do have one from the mid 2000s, and it is built more like your 80s model. The ringer is large, and uses ITT’s ball bearing design. The speech network uses all passive components.

[@St0rmcrash]

Look for model number ending in M instead of MD to get the made in USA one. And yeah other than the ITT ball bearing ringer (which at least has the same gongs as the classic AT&T one) the network hookswitch and dial are pretty much unchanged from the 80s

[@dennisp.2147]

I believe Cortelco shut the US manufacturing plant in 2007 or thereabouts.

[@brianleeper5737]

@@St0rmcrash Can't find the USA-made one on Amazon (at least not when I looked), gotta get it from CDW. It's more expensive, closer to $60 or $70 with shipping.

[@scanman975]

Model 500 series will forever be my favorite telephone line.

[@johnrehwinkel7241]

I got tired of getting calls during dinner, so I added a phone in the dining room. I had found a box of old phones in a barn, genuine Western Electric model 500 rotary dial ones. I had to adapt the cord to a modular plug, but it worked. Then a lightning strike took out my 1980s era Radio Shack touch tone phone, so I replaced it with another 500 from the box (the first 500 of course was not damaged). The surfaces are a little grungy, I may take off the housings and run them through the dishwasher.

[@doomer37]

It's very satisfying hearing that click when you pick it up.

[@reesenga9535]

Interesting tidbit. Never thought I’d be so vested in the build quality and design of an old iconic film but here we are. Thank you.

[@_GhostMiner]

*0:20** young Linus appearance?*

[@xaenon]

"Obnoxiously loud" is the understatement of the century with regard to the earlier model. I worked in a warehouse in the 1980s, and the foreman's office had one of those things in it. You could hear it all the way from the other end of the building.

[@jcxtra]

Oh lovely. In the UK we have a very similar rotary phone the GPO746, which I've spent some time buying "untested" examples on ebay and getting them running again. I also setup a Grandstream ATA bridge so I can use them as a VOIP phone, with pulse>touch conversion so you're not locked out of touchtone services (and setting it to the UK cadences for ringer and dial-tone of course 😃

[@ashton5493]

As an older gen Z who was born in the year 2000 I oddly enough still see these phones as nostalgic. My parents and grandparents had these types of phones and the last time used one in person I was 7, and that was because my family moved into a newer built house without a land line and around that time was also when my grandparents on my dads side updated their phones and my grandma on my moms side passed away so I never seen her phone again either. But now that I’m an adult I moved into an older house that still had a working land line and I bought a nice red vintage rotary phone just like the one my parents used to have. Now my son who is currently a 4 year old gen Alpha kid who would also feel nostalgic about it someday, and he loves to call his grandparents on it, so far he’s the only kid these days that I know if who knows of how to use them.

[@zaxchannel2834]

Can't find it online anymore but I know at least as late as ten years ago there were still phone companies charging rental fees for telephones that unaware seniors didn't realize they didn't need to pay

[@Rickmakes]

Since the phone company owned the equipment, they had a vested interest in it lasting forever. When it did break, they could repair it and send it back out.

[@Tiffany15222]

I miss the sturdy appliances. We have a couple of these at work still running over copper as a backup and using it is SO satisfying.

[@rowjelio]

This is one of the best KZbin videos I've seen in a long time. Great work!

[@Hamilton-bm4qj]

I had my own line when I was a teen in the 90s. I found one of the old rotaries in the trash. That ringer was insane. And it took forever to make a call. But even back then, it was super retro cool.

[@gwheregwhizz]

Having watched a lot of 60s and 70s American television, when the cap was unscrewed I expected you to find a bug.

[@ex7229]

Im a network engineer and we use these for our analog phone lines at certain sites. Lobbies and senior residents use them. Theyre rarely replaced.

[@will89687]

I upgraded my old school 500 rotary dial phone back in the '80s with one of those custom mouthpieces with an integrated touch tone keypad and electret microphone. This allowed me to navigate voice mail menus and use alternative long distance services.

[@dennisp.2147]

I'm not sure about the made in China Cortelco 2500 style set but the last of the US made Cortelcos in the mid 2000's could easily swap in the older style ringer from a rotary 500. In 2004 we had three hurricanes come through Central Florida. Power was out for almost a month. Cell service was gone after a day. The only things that worked were my 1950's Moss Green Western Electric 500 rotary phone and my 1937 Western Electric model 302. I'm not sure that would be the case today, but I keep my landline, even if i'm not sure the twisted pair goes much farther than the local box.

[@jsciarri]

I actually have a Cortelco phone from 2004 that was used in Circuit City for years that shockingly enough was made in the USA. Even still has the "oper" above the 0 button and has the older style ringer switch on the bottom of the phone. Same as you we lost power for over two weeks when Hurricane Sandy hit Long Island in 2012. The only phone that worked was the Cortelco and was used frequently during that time.

[@dennisp.2147]

@@jsciarri Cortelco made the touchtone 2500 sets and even the rotary 500 sets in Corinth, MS until 2007. They were pretty close to the WE sets. I suspect when they closed the plant in 2007, they shipped the manufacturing line to China and "modernized" it. I'm never giving mine up!

[@brianleeper5737]

Cortelco *STILL* makes US-made sets. They aren't sold on Amazon, though, and cost about $20-$30 more.

[@dennisp.2147]

@@brianleeper5737 I'm pretty sure that I read an article that they closed the US plant. But I can't find it, Google being worthless anymore. Are you sure they're still making them, and not just selling off backstock?

[@brianleeper5737]

@@dennisp.2147 if they weren't still making them (my neighbor bought a US-made 2554 wall telephone from CDW a few months ago) that's a hell of a backstock...2007 was 17 years ago!

[@2011joser]

I remember my brother and I begging our mom to get the touch tone phone when we moved in the late 70’s. She didn’t like the fancy new technology so we got a black rotary unit, the only one in our neighborhood.

[@dennisschnobrich9288]

I remember back in the 60's and 70's when carbon mics were used if the person on the other end has trouble hearing you just tap on the mic to improve it.

[@brianleeper5737]

You can only physically abuse a carbon mike for better sound quality so much before the carbon turns into powder and that's the end of that mike.

[@maisies927]

When I was a kid, my foster parents would put a lock on the phone if we were in trouble, so we couldn't call our friends. We figured out if we took the dial plate off, we could call the operator. We would say we were having problems with the number. It always worked. When you take the plastic plate off, under it is a kind of circle metal gray plate. You just turn it all the way, and it would call the operator.

[@altebander2767]

Actually mobile telephones today mostly seem to use MEMS microphones which are much smaller than the bulky electret ones. Carbon microphones weren't that reliable. Sure they were reliable compared to tube-based amplifiers, but once the transistor came in, you could, at least in Germany, get dynamic microphones with a built-in amplifier for much improved quality, particularly as they tended to go bad after a very few decades. One problem is that the granules tend to stick together if not used regularly.

[@michaeljohndennis2231]

At age 53, I remember the old rotary phones growing up in Rural Ireland in the 1970’s - back then, in some Rural areas, you had to ring/call the operator at the nearest Irish telephone exchange in Rural Ireland to call for example “Ballivor 352” and in the GPO in Dublin, you had to book international calls in advance, using one of the international call boxes - we started out with the P&T, then it became Telecom Éireann, then it became Eircom

[@FukugawaUtake]

Another thing to note on the original Western Electric phones is that they were refurbished over the years, I have at least one that has multiple dates from the mid 70s to the mid 80s and one of the stickers on the bottom is colored indicating it might be refurbished and is covering one or two older date stickers. If I still had a land line I might have considered buying one of these new ones!

[@dennisp.2147]

I've got a 500 set with a baseplate and network from the mid 1950's, bell set from the 70's rotary assembly from the 60's and transmitter/receiver caps from the early 1980's. It has a sticker on the bottom where ATT refurbished it in 1983 before selling it after the breakup. Don't buy a MIC Cortelco, you can get the real McCoy for less than half the price. And they usually have brass bells that sound right, instead of the steel ones in the MIC phone.

[@11sfr]

Cortelco still made the original rotary version (both desktop and wall mount) until 2007. For several years after that, they continued selling dialess desk and wall phones that used the rotary case design, as well as a modified rotary wall phone with a keypad insert. The old 1950s cases were finally discontinued entirely sometime in the 2010s.

[@RDavies73]

i live in Wales (europe) and we had a rotary dial phone well into the mid 80s , we rented it from BT (British telecom )

[@johnsnape1907]

I remember when we had the rotary dial phones: you could pick up the handset, dial 4-1-5 and listen for the dial tone to return a few seconds later. Then dial 6 and hang it up. The phone would ring back until you picked it up, but there wouldn't be anyone on the other end. My brother used to drive our mom crazy doing this at random times.

[@InventorZahran]

This is way better than the cheap, low-quality "replicas" sold on Amazon!

[@misterwhipple2870]

I like to buy old phones (I worked for AT&T for 28 years) and I only get them off eBay and I only get the Real Thing. Western Electric all the way!