- 2023
- Dec
- 1
Random board shot: The Bell (Model?) Telephone Desk Speaker
My grandfather worked for the Bell System Long Lines division for his entire career, and I worked for one of Ma’s manufacturing locations just before it got spun off into the atrocity called Lucent Technologies, so Bell memorabilia is kind of an interesting thing to me. I remember all kinds of things in my grandparent’s home that you couldn’t necessarily get as a consumer - one of those being desk speakers on every phone in the place. And there were many many phones, apparently being wired without incurring the Bell System’s multi-device charges!
This desk speaker, while not one of his (all of those vanished…) it’s very similar. Not sure of the model here, it resembles a 107A but has an on/off switch along side the regular volume control.
The old Bell System logo resides here, being much more visually appealing than the later, minimal logo.
The inside, of course, is all Bell parts. Speakers and microphone were made by or for Bell, capacitors from the Hawthorne Works, and even the plastic case and metal parts were probably stamped out and molded by a Bell facility. It’s a simple line powered amp and mic, used in place of the handset.
My mother tells me stories of having her father (my grandfather) call in from where ever he was working at the time (he traveled the country doing line installs) and having the entire family gather around one of these speakers. When you worked for the phone company, making long-distance calls didn’t cost you anything from the job site, apparently!
The most interesting thing about this device, of course, is the PCB. Right there it is, the orange Textolite “T” indicating that the raw circuit board itself was made in Coshocton at the 2nd Street GE plant, just a stone’s throw from where my grandfather’s depot was based.
It amazes me how far, and how near products from this plant roamed. They’re in almost everything made in the USA up until the 80s. All of that, of course, is gone - something we’ll probably be sorry we did one day (soon!)