i am soooooo "jelly"!

Cool!

That is so cool!

Love it. Makes me wish I had bought the wall model when I was in The Ark while in Colorado visiting my son last year. :-)

Love it!

Looks fantastic! I no longer have a land line, but when I did, I liked to use an older rotary phone (not as cool and vintage as yours unfortunately). The feel of a rotary phone is so pleasant. And yours is a real looker too!

So cute....I've never seen a wall phone like that....I do miss rotary dial!

Love it!

Hope you have a young teen in your life that you can ask to make a call for you.

ML

I like it! I'll never give up my landline and phones (in each room!). They're more convenient than a cell or cordless.

I think it's a matter of time before these phones are "In" again with the younger generation.

Thanks all. I've been looking for a couple years for a 1940 model in good working condition but found this one in really good shape and ready to use. For some answers on the phone's history and installation suggestions I went to a classic rotary phone forum and talked with owners and collectors of vintage phones. One guy told me that altho my phone may say 1956 inside, the design is from the 1940's. So I'm happy about that.

I first became enamored while watching "Don Matteo", an Italian TV series and in his living quarters hangs a wall phone similar to mine only smaller I think and probably European.

I love it! I'm "jelly" too.

Love those old phones.

What's not to love...that's awesome! And the clock is, too :)

That is a very fine phone. You don't have to worry about it breaking. If it's been working all these years it will probably keep on going for many more. Phones back then were over-engineered on the side of durability.

The model you have was probably used in an office or other commercial environment since the dial only has numbers. Direct dial would only have been supported to other phones within the company. There would have been no direct dial outside the building or company. To dial out, one would have to get the operator at the company switchboard.

And then there are the youngin's these days who don't even know what a dial phone is. Sigh. Feeling my age. TouchTone phones were introduced about 50 years ago but were not all that common even into the 70's. The phone company used to charge extra every month to support tone signalling on your line. You couldn't just plug in a button phone if you only had dial phones. The tone signalling wouldn't work.

Thanks Dreaming. The phone case and receiver are made of bakelite, which is a plastic but is also breakable if dropped. I didn't even notice it had only numbers but my other antique rotary phone in the library does too and I'm pretty sure it wasn't an office phone. But I was curious so asked the guys on the Classic Rotary Phone forum about numbers and letters on dials.

maddielee, like Dreaming you mentioned about young people and rotary phones. It reminds me of the movie I saw one time where a fashion model was practically in tears because she kept punching the holes in the rotary phone dial and got so frustrated because she couldn't dial a number. LOL

Love your phone! I've considered the pottery barn ones, but I don't find them comfortable at all. I will have to look for a vintage one after seeing yours.

Not sure what you mean by the PB phones not being comfortable, but these vintage phones have some weight to them esp. the receiver.

I really like the style of some of the smaller European models, and altho the sellers claim they are in good working order and can be used in the USA with no problem I was worried. You can find them on Ebay. Mine came from an online antique shop in Wisconsin which I just happened to come across while surfing for "vintage wall phones" and the price was very reasonable. Good luck in your search.

That phone is great! The plain cord is fabulous, with the clock and beadboard; Love it!
We had a phone niche in the wall of the house we lived in when I was little. Early 60's my mom got a new green button phone with a 25 foot cord; that way we could take the phone to the closed staircase and shut the door for privacy.

Yes, bakelite is very breakable and chips easily. But, the phone is mounted now and with reasonable care with the receiver (like not dropping it) you should be OK.

Before the proliferation of fax machines, computer dial up lines and cell phones drove up the demand for phone numbers, local dialing only required 7 digits. For example, Chicago and surrounding suburbs all had one area code, 312, which did not have to be dialed when calling local numbers. (Direct distance dialing (DDD), where you could dial an area code followed by the 7 digit phone number was also a later innovation. It wasn't universal in the USA until about the late 60's. Depending on your town, you would have to dial the operator and ask her to place the long distance call for you.)

A phone number was given out by the first two letters of the telephone exchange's name to which you were connected. You will hear this in old movies or TV shows. For example, if you verbally gave your phone number to someone, you would say "Klondike-5-1-2-1-2". You would not say "555-1212". Written down, it would be "KL5-1212". That's why the letters were needed on a phone dial. For internal service in a company, you would only dial the extension number - 3, 4 or 5 digits, depending on the number of extensions a company had. Letters weren't needed in that case.

Operationally, however, the phones work the same way in either case.

This post was edited by DreamingoftheUP on Sat, Mar 8, 14 at 10:08

Invite some teenagers over. Have the phone ring. See what happens.

Give them the phone number of a pizza place. Tell them if they can reach the place with that phone they can order a pizza and you are buying. Post back with the results.

Love that phone--now I want one!

Yay! The first phone call since it was installed came in awhile ago. Now I know for sure it works. Loud old timey ring.