I love antique phones.
Rounded, sturdy, beautiful objects that did their jobs for decades. Just their carbon microphones needed replacements now and then though.
You could follow the wiring diagram. The electronics was not yet super miniaturized.
And the ringing of their large bells was harmonious: Many smartphone owners still pick that sound as their ringtone.
Rotary-dial phones (and pulse dialing) do not work anymore on modern (Voice-over-IP-powered) telephone connections unless you install a converter. I have used a Siemens W48 with my landline telephone connection for a long time – as only scammers and aggressive salespeople use that number. They believe they can trick me into calling them back after a brief ping call. Too bad the apparatus does not have a display!
The W48 spent a long time in a dark room, at the research center I once worked in the materials science department. Those were the times we used physical photographic films with transmission electron microscopy.
Digitization of this process was right around the corner, and the telephone system was already more modern, using push-button phones. The W48 sat in a corner, forgotten. The phone lacked the carbon microphone; obviously it had been used as spare part for another phone. But fortunately, there are still shops selling these parts to this day!
I am pairing this phone with its iconic 1970s successor, the FeTap 611. Grey, unassuming, with a less beautiful ringtone. This (the model, not this exact phone) is the telephone of my childhood. Telephone connections were shared among four households back then in Austria: Picking up the receiver there was a chance you did not hear a dial-tone.
I also found this gray phone: It was installed when we moved into our house, at a time when you already would have expected to find a key-operated one. Skipping several evolutions of technology, we upgraded to ISDN immediately – bleeding edge back then, deprecated and retired today.
What can you do with two old phones? You can connect them directly and build a simple intercom: You only need a resistor and a battery in between to simulate the telephone exchange. There is no ringer though; you could need to install a magneto on this line to generate the required AC signal.
I tested this intercom in the most unprofessional, makeshift way possible – challenging myself to find something that has the proper resistance “naturally” (about 300-400 Ohm). I use the base plate of an old dismantled flatiron – this contributes about 50 Ohm. But I am lucky: I purchased a spare speaker together with the spare microphones, and the loudspeaker adds the missing 300 Ohm.
The sound was still a bit too faint, so I added another coin battery to the recommended 9V battery.
Then I took several photos of this setup, cropped one of them, and I have started drawing the scene on black paper.
