Calling all Lovers of Vintage and Retro Style Telephones
If you are of a certain age , you will have experienced the tactile as well as the functionality of the telephones in general use in the 1940s ,1950s and 1960s. Depending on where the telephone instrument was sited, whether in the office or in the comfort of a living room at home, you will have appreciated its utility. Of course the ubiquitous mobile of today has a phenomenal number of additional applications designed not merely to allow the simple facility of speaking to someone who is connected to your line. It will also let you access amazing multimedia content.
But back in the, perhaps slower paced every day life of five or six decades ago, making or receiving a telephone call was a sensory event. Firstly, the unmistakable ringtone of an incoming call, and then the lifting of the receiver, most often a solid piece of bakelite, to the ear. It was usually appropriate to sit down in order to concentrate on the caller, if the call developed into a lengthy one.
As the telephone was physically connected to a fixed cable to a wall socket, you usually knew where to find it, and that a comfortable chair would be strategically placed near it.
The benefits of the vintage phone worked equally well when making a call. Pick-up the hefty receiver, listen for a satisfying dial-tone, and then dialling-in the number of the person you wished to speak using the rotary dialling mechanism, you listened to the whirring as the dialler returned to rest after each digit was chosen. The task of replacing the receiver on the telephone rest with a gentle ‘clunk’ had a degree of gentle finality about it. So making or receiving a call in those far of days was somewhat of an event.
If you hanker for the days when telephone numbers were prefixed by name of the exchange in the caller’s area, like CENtral, ROYal, and BLAckfriars, for instance, you can easily enjoy for the first time, or once again, the timeless experience of using a vintage telephone handset. For great website for refurbished vintage telephones and retro classic copies of such phones, you can go to Abdy Retro for a large range, including the classic 300 series 1950s black bakelite models beloved of all the self respecting detective TV series of the day, you can also probably still find a 1920s ‘candlestick’ phone .
The sister site to Abdy Retro is Abdy Antiques which is a family firm which repairs these wonderful British instruments, restoring them to their former glory and adapting them so that they can be used as proper phones today.