atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems Loose Finger Wheel.

Well heck, it should have come right off unless something was damaged to begin with.

The card in the center of the dial had been flipped over at some point so I can only guess how, whoever did the work, went about removing it. :shrug: :confused:

I'm going to look for a schematic and try to wire a temporary modular plug. I'd like to see how well this thing works.

Off subject:
Are rotary phones used anymore (at least in the US)???

I was at a museum and the grandmother was explaining to her young grandaughters how the rotary phone on display worked. They had no idea other than it was a phone but were mystified by the fingerwheel.

Now I feel old,
Sam

Oh yes, there are still plenty of them out there. The federal government still uses them in some places here in DC. My 17 year old son has a black 554 on the wall in his bedroom because he thought it was "cool".

I've also seen some that were still in use. They had these cool mechanical-style pencils (with a small, globe-shaped magnifying glass at the end of them) tied to each phone with a string. I should have asked them about it, but I didn't. I'm guessing that this was to both magnify the phone book pages, while also fitting inside the rotary dial circles so that they could dial their phones without ruining their fingernails? :shrug:

up here in montreal land there was a general foods plant that had a 1A2 system running till last year (most of it is now in my basement) the metro (subway) uses all AE rotary phones, olympic stadium too!

I used to work for a moving company and I was surprised how common they still were, particularly in older people's apartments along Park Ave. One of those buildings even still had a rotary payphone in the service entrance area.

When I was still in High School I worked at a Ace Hardware that was a agent for AT&T Consumer Lease Services and almost daily we'd do transactions involving rotary phones, I remember one guy upgraded his Princess to Touch-Tone. His old rotary princess (white) was particularly nice so during my lunch break I ran home and got a worn out blue Princess and exchanged it for his nice one (CLS doesn't keep track of color, so any phone they get back is OK as long as it's the same model). Needless to say, though, most transactions were returns and canceling the account.

Sorry to pull my own topic further off track but renting telephones in this day & age really doesn't make much sense (Residential of course).

Old Western Electric 500, 1500 and 2500 telephones are always available for purchase on eBay. Except for the 1500s (which almost always sell for big money) these telephones tend to be inexpensive.

I've been buying (garage sales, hamfests, flea markets, etc.) and selling (eBay) Western Electric customer premises equipment for over 12 years and I've never seen a 1500 in real life... and I got all kinds of unusual stuff like the old "portable" conference phone, a phone built into an outdoors enclosure, a 464G (1A2 type phone based on the 302), etc.... but never seen a 1500!

back in the mid '80's I was involved with some "refurbing" we used to make 1500's and 3500's out of 500's and 554's all the time .

(actually this is the first I recall hearing the 1500 designation.) as I recall the 1500 style weren't popular and didn't sell so we didn't do many . 3500 conversions sold well people liked the large size vs 2554's