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

[@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.

[@jwr2904]

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]

@@jwr2904 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]

​@@jwr2904 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.

[@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).

[@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$$.

[@Dee-u4r]

Nonsense didn’t he say it was “destined to be tossed” who are you anyway (the feds)

[@jamesslick4790]

@@Dee-u4r What "@misterwhipple2870" was talking about is the old (original, pre breakup) AT&T. (then the owners of the Bell Telephone system AND Western Electric) If one took an old phone from THEM while working for THEM, EVEN if the phone was destined to be destroyed, They considered taking it to be THEFT, And one would be certainly be fired (Ma Bell was a ruthless Mother!). Source: MANY of my family members worked for "Ma Bell" from 1905-1984. If Circuit City let a Circuit City worker take home an old phone that was owned by Circuit City, That's Circuit City's prerogative.

[@David_Phantom]

I love how the ring lingers into the next clip

[@bazzers]

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

[@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.

[@gobbletegook]

It took years of research by Bell labs and Western electric to design these. Henry Dreyfuss was an American industrial designer who designed it...and got it right.

[@stevencooper2464]

One of the "nice" things about those old phones was that you could slam down the receiver in furious anger, and the phone would survive, even if you broke your hand in the process. Ah, the good old days.

[@dgwaters]

I absolutely love vintage telephones like these. I collect these and they all STILL work! Mostly I have the Western Electrics from the 1940’s and 50’s but I have a few of the early push button phones from the 60’s and 70’s as well as a 60’s pay phone.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@elijahvincent985]

I thank GOD that somebody out there has the sense to say "This still works. Keep making it." This is a GEM.

[@hyun-shik7327]

This is very representative of every change in electronic products over time: replacement of quality with features.

[@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.

[@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. 👍🏼

[@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

[@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!

[@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.

[@scotsmith2391]

The one thing that you did not demonstrate was that fulfilling feeling of slamming the receiver down when the person on the other end ticked you off. What a glorious release that was. Cant do that with a smart phone. 😁

[@supershmueli]

I tried doing that and I broke my iPhone 😢

[@scotsmith2391]

@@supershmueli OHhhhh you should have used a Nextel...LOL

[@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

[@greenroad4834]

I got one of these phones for an elderly relative with dementia. She was so thrilled to have a phone that she knew how to use.

[@unbreakableunion]

That is sweet of you

[@CassiWoo]

How did you hook the phone up and is it connected to a landline? Thank you!

[@greenroad4834]

@ I bought a repro version at Ace Hardware that plugged right into the landline phone wall jack.

[@unbreakableunion]

@@CassiWoo you plug it into the wall where you plug your internet connection and no power plug

[@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.

[@datassetteuser356]

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

[@barrypeterson9692]

They are used as backup in control centers for the power grid, power plants, water treatment plants, and 911 call centers. They are a mandatory part of any critical operation center. Oddly enough they are often the phone contacted to a satellite transceiver.

[@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!

[@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?

[@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.

[@adam_the_idiot8811]

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.

[@REXXSEVEN_II]

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

[@ghw7192]

Hurricane Helene took out many of the towers in Western North Carolina where I live and I had no cell phone service for a week. I now have a land line. I am also looking for an old Westrrn Electric rotary phone to go with it. Great video. Thanks!

[@987654321wormy]

My neighbor retired from the local phone company. When pay phones fell out of favor he rescued about a dozen of them from the trash. He actually has one hooked up in his shop. For someone who grew up around pay phones I'm extremely jealous.

[@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.

[@golfguy25]

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

[@dennisp.2147]

In the US no less...

[@mikedavid7168]

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

[@Derpy1969]

Get off the phone!

[@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.

[@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.

[@rowjelio]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@welrod94]

For people saying "why would you buy a corded phone?" Well because when you live in the middle of nowhere in "Appalachian mtns" and you lose power fairly often. You can still use the corded phones but not cordless phones "obviously" yes people have cell phones but if you cant charge them it's kinda pointless. When the Derecho hit like 10 years ago we lost power for like 14 days. We got a generator back when that happened but still sometimes cell phone carriers go down too. It's nice having a backup

[@muddywater6856]

Fellow Appalachian here.....we kept our land line till 2020 because we had no cell service. Had touch tone phones and 1 old black rotary phone. My granddaughters friends were amazed by it. Would try to dial it by pushing the numbers through the holes in the rotary dial.😅

[@chrisbosley7095]

I love these old phones! I have a Western Electric Trimline in the kitchen that works - hooked up to a VoIP system. I also have cordless phones hooked up. Sound quality is so much better than my cell phone.

[@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.

[@michaeldibb]

The ringer reminds me of the Intro to The Rockford Files with James Garner as the detective. ❤

[@Zayvion-w2g]

When I was young I loved that show 😊

[@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.

[@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.

[@multitalent8]

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

[@XolaresTiberius]

Miss the days when a call pissed you off you slam it and make it ping! Even the wall mounted models never broke!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@BrentFla]

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

[@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...

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@BlankBrain]

Our first phone had the location for a dial, but it was blank. You just picked up the receiver, listened to see if someone else was on the party line, (1) listened for the operator, and told her the local four digit number or asked for long distance. Later, when I was probably five years old, I had to learn how to use the new dial phone, (1) You may have had to press the hook flash to get the operator's attention. The operators got to know you, so sometimes you'd talk to them while waiting for the other party to answer,

[@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.

[@joeg5414]

my 90 year old grandparents finally got rid of their rotary phone like 5 years ago😂 They still had a better cordless phone too, but the old one was still hooked up and worked in their basement.

[@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)

[@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

[@glennso47]

@@Lion-dr7uvand eggs in her beer and her money back. 😊

[@glennso47]

Obnoxiously soft?

[@Johnsolerokar]

I love that AT&T cordless phone you showed!

[@davidg4288]

I had an old cordless years ago that was VHF. It had a whip antennas with loading coils. It worked fairly well although very insecure so I never used it for banking or credit cards but I used it well into obsolescence. Some amateur radio operator used to yell at me occasionally saying I was using the frequency illegally. I think the thing transmitted 100 milliwatts if you were lucky so I just pretended not to hear him.

[@drumhd1]

Great presentation so well done. Can’t we go back?

[@talon262]

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

[@RyansAlwaysEaton]

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

[@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.

[@ferretbop99]

Very satisfying video. I love old tech ever since I was a child

[@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.

[@kwas101]

Always an enjoyable and informative video on this channel. I look forward to every single one!

[@doomer37]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@GOPRepubliklan]

Midwestern retailer Meijer put wall mount versions of these all over their stores well into the 2000s. The single low tone bell was one of those signature sounds that you always heard there. Maybe even still today, haven't been there in a long time.

[@Ragnarok540]

We still had rotary phones in the 90's where I live. Wild stuff.

[@ryansease7066]

Good stuff and a little surprising to see these phones still be sold today.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.🤣

[@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]

😁👍

[@stevenjlovelace]

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

[@JailDoctor1]

I'm seventy two years old. I've dialed five digits to call my neighbors. Now I need ten ........ plus

[@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.

[@simonbone]

3:09 The ITT phones weren't made for Western Electric or the Bell System, but for the regions of the US where another telephone company, rather than the Bell System, was the local monopoly (GTE, ITT, and smaller companies). They were, of course, built under license. ITT's equipment was made by their Kellogg subsidiary and GTE's was made by Automatic Electric, but they later dropped the brands of their in-house equipment makers. Cortelco was itself originally a subsidiary of Kellogg, so its phones do count as being authentic 500-series, as their pedigree derives from the Kellogg/ITT license to build the Western Electric design.

[@brianleeper5737]

We had Contel here (which became GTE in 1990 and then Verizon in 2000). Contel seemed to prefer Stromberg-Carlson phones. GTE themselves made their own phones (Automatic Electric) and that's what they used.

[@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.

[@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 😃

[@labyrinth75]

My maternal grandmother lived in a rural area of east Alabama that required rotary dial phones up until the late 80's. I had cousins in that same area that were even farther back in the sticks and were still on party lines. I took a evening job in the early-90's telemarketing while in college in Arkansas and we used those old heavy telephones with the neck rest attached. Everyone in that office were part-time workers and many of them were older men who chain smoked back when smoking was still allowed at work. There was a haze of cigarette smoke throughout the office.

[@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

[@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 )

[@johntammaro]

Loving this.. amazing sounds

[@leannlearnsbooks]

Nothing beats the beauty of the French style Rotary dial Phones. They're just so artistic looking.

[@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.

[@dougfowler1368]

Yep, I love that old style ringtone. Fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing.

[@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.

[@elzar760]

My grandma had a black version of the ringer on the bookcase at the end of the hallway as long as I had been alive and probably before. She still received the rental bill for it until it was disconnected sometime in the 2000’s. She had been paying her phone bill to Ameritech for all that time and a separate bill to AT&T to rent the phone. When my mom had it shut off AT&T, after paying 5.95 or there abouts for that phone for at least 30 years, AT&T sent a fedex back for her to ship it back to them.

[@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!