A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone number to a telephone exchange.
A telephone, colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into electronic signals that are transmitted via cables and other communication channels to another telephone which reproduces the sound to the receiving user. The term is derived from Ancient Greek: τῆλε, romanized: tēle, lit. 'far' and φωνή, together meaning distant voice.
A telephone call or telephone conversation, also known as a phone call or voice call, is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. Telephone calls started in the late 19th century. As technology has improved, a majority of telephone calls are made over a cellular network through mobile phones or over the internet with Voice over IP. Telephone calls are typically used for real-time conversation between two or more parties, especially when the parties cannot meet in person.
The Ericofon is a one-piece plastic telephone created by the Ericsson Company of Sweden and marketed through the second half of the 20th century. It was the first commercially marketed telephone to incorporate the dial and handset into a single unit. Because of its styling and its influence on future telephone design, the Ericofon is considered one of the most significant industrial designs of the 20th century by Phaidon. It is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In Sweden, the Ericofon is known as the cobra telephone for its resemblance to a coiled snake.
The Western Electric model 500 telephone series was the standard domestic desk telephone set issued by the Bell System in North America from 1950 through the 1984 Bell System divestiture. The successor to the model 302 telephone, the model 500's modular construction compared to previous types simplified manufacture and repair and facilitated a large number of variants with added features. Touch-tone service was introduced to residential customers in 1963 with the model 1500 telephone, which had a push-button pad for the ten digits. The model 2500 telephone, introduced in 1968, added the * (asterisk) and # (pound) keys.
The model 302 telephone is a desk set telephone that was manufactured in the United States by Western Electric from 1937 until 1955, and by Northern Electric in Canada until the late 1950s, until well after the introduction of the 500-type telephone in 1949. The sets were routinely refurbished into the 1960s. It was one of the most widely used American combined telephone sets to include the ringer and network circuitry in the same telephone housing.
Design Line, also known as Deco-Tel, is a brand name that AT&T has used for several of its specialty telephone designs to fulfill the demand by customers for more variety in telephone models.
AT&T Technologies, Inc., was created by AT&T in 1983 in preparation for the breakup of the Bell System, which became effective as of January 1, 1984. It assumed the corporate charter of Western Electric Co., Inc.
The Princess telephone was introduced by the Bell System in 1959. It was a compact telephone designed for convenient use in the bedroom, and contained a light-up dial for use as a night-light. It was commonly advertised with the slogan "It's little...It's lovely...It lights", which was suggested by Robert Karl Lethin, an AT&T employee.
QLT Consumer Lease Services, formerly AT&T Consumer Lease Services, is a New Jersey-based telephone equipment leasing company. The company provides telephone leasing services to residences and small businesses in the United States. These services include next business day replacement of the leased product for any reason.
AT&T Merlin is a corporate telephone system by American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) that was introduced in late 1983, when it was branded American Bell Merlin. After the breakup of AT&T in 1984, it was rebranded and later also supplied by Lucent and Avaya.
The 1A2 Key Telephone System is a business telephone system developed and distributed by the Western Electric Company for the Bell System.
This history of the telephone chronicles the development of the electrical telephone, and includes a brief overview of its predecessors. The first telephone patent was granted to Alexander Graham Bell in 1869.
The model 5302 telephone was a look-alike product to the 500-type telephone that was introduced as a stopgap by Western Electric in 1955 to meet the increasing post-World War II demand for a modernized telephone. It reused existing component supplies from the older model 302 that the model 502 replaced. The 302 had been issued since 1937, but starting in 1950, units were replaced with the new 500-series sets, without having served their useful component life.
The Trimphone is a model of telephone designed in the early 1960s in the UK, the first prototypes appearing in 1965. It was positioned as a more fashionable alternative to the standard telephones available from the Post Office Telephones, the nationalised predecessor to British Telecom. The name is an acronym standing for Tone Ring Illuminator Model, referring to the then innovative electronic ringer and the illuminated dial. The luminous dial or betalight contained the mildly radioactive element tritium, which later caused some concern about safety. In June 1991, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell was fined £3,000 by Wantage Magistrates Court for accumulating radioactive waste, having collected several thousand Trimphone luminous dials in a skip.
The General Post Office (GPO) of the United Kingdom carried the sole responsibility for providing telecommunication services across the country with the exception of Hull. The GPO issued a range of telephone instruments to telephone service subscribers that were matched in function and performance to its telephone exchanges.
The candlestick telephone is a style of telephone that was common from the late 1890s to the 1940s. A candlestick telephone is also often referred to as a desk stand, an upright, or a stick phone. Candlestick telephones featured a mouthpiece (transmitter) mounted at the top of the stand, and a receiver (earphone) that was held by the user to the ear during a call. When the telephone was not in use, the receiver rested in the fork of the switch hook protruding to the side of the stand, thereby disconnecting the audio circuit from the telephone network.
A push-button telephone is a telephone that has buttons or keys for dialing a telephone number, in contrast to a rotary dial used in earlier telephones.
The Contempra is a telephone designed and produced by Northern Electric beginning in 1967. Contempra was the first phone designed in Canada, previous Canadian sets having been designed in the US for Western Electric and built under licence.
The Western Electric hand telephone sets are a series of telephones that were produced from 1927 by the Western Electric Company for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) and the Bell System. The series features the mouthpiece (transmitter) and the earpiece (receiver) combined into a hand-held unit, originally named a hand telephone, or handset. The handset would be held against the ear and in front of the mouth simultaneously, in contrast to earlier telephones in the Bell System where only the receiver was held against the ear, while the user spoke into a fixed transmitter mounted on a telephone stand or wall telephone.
