In these days we have a multitude of options available to us when we want to contact somebody. I don't think my son could imagine having to hand write a letter to someone and then wait several days for a reply! If my memory serves me right it was many years before my parents got an ansafone, so if you missed a call or there was nobody in to take a message it was just tough luck. Back when we got our flat in 1990 it came with a really old fashioned dumpy little grey phone with a dial [am guessing it was from the early 1960s when the place was built]...it was so quaint that BT used to give us a discount on our bills, but heck if we had a call I should think the whole block must have known. It certainly had a lusty bellowing bell and served us well in the time we lived there. I quite missed it in a funny sort of way.
These phones we saw on display last week stirred some memories....how could I have forgotten about Buzby and I was reminded of my friend's Tasmanian devil phone she had. Modern phones definitely seem to be lacking in imagination and soul. Do any of these tickle your fancy.....think I'd personally pass on that Barbara Cartland pink velvet jobbie!
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I love the rose decals! Whatever could the 'secret' or 'normal' buttons signify, I wonder? And the handy pull-put bit for your telephone booklet - back when you only needed a dozen in your life, tops. If you were posh, you could have your phone customised in all manner of materials, like having a custom car mascot. I've seen photos of an old touchtone phone with a blue Wedgwood jasperware housing - very fancy! I've a 50s bakelite jobbie that you can hear ringing from all over my apartment block.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't noticed those buttons....wish I'd photographed the details for it now! Arilx
DeleteMy Mam still uses 2 phones like this.They are years old and we have begged her to let us get her the ones that are cord less,but refuses.Saying that they still work fine!.Her mobile we got her she never uses either.Even after having a fall and breaking her wrist in the garden,I tried explaining that with a cord less phone in her pocket she could have rang us straight away,but she still wont change!xx
ReplyDeleteI can see it as a tripping hazard, however it's good to keep a plug in phone as a spare incase of a power cut [as we found out!] Arilx
DeleteI have the chameleon phone!
ReplyDeleteYou are in good company then! Arilx
DeleteMany years ago I cat sat for a very posh employer whose study was an elaborate recreation of a scene set in a jazz-age stately home. On his desk, along with a genuine leather blotter and faux Egyptian antiquities, sat a stick phone -- a stalk with a speaker on the end that looked like a daffodil and an ear piece attachment. It rang as I was in transit with the cat on my arm, I picked up the ear piece, but it took me several minutes of squawking "hello? hello?" into space to recognize the need to pick up the stalk and speak into the flower....
ReplyDeleteWhat a fabulous memory. I don't think I've ever answered a phone that wasn't bog standard. Arilx
DeleteWe still use our red rotary dial phone, So stylish! xxx
ReplyDeleteI love a rotary dial one. When our son first saw one he didn't realise that you had to take your finger out so that it would go back before you could dial the next number. He's totally of the mobile phone generation! Arilx
DeleteI remember in the 70s as a child our first phone was a Trimphone, remember them? horrid noise and when you lifted the receiver the base flew of the table!
ReplyDeleteI had one when I was temping as a student in the mid 80s. Noise went right through you! Arilx
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