Photos of everything retro and vintage

[xyz]

A W48 German telephone, some time between 1948 and 1961.

I'm thinking you could use it to answer the phone, not sure you could still dial numbers.

Alas, someone else beat me to it, once it got out on the sales floor.

It did prompt me to do a little bit of research into the concept of making an antique telephone work with a modern phone line. The two main issues seem to be that modern phone companies have dropped support for pulse-dialing, and that most modern phone lines don't reliably put put a strong enough ring signal to activate the old ringers. There is equipment that you can get, to put between an old phone and a modern phone line, at least to implement pulse-dial support on your end, intercepting the pulse dials from the phone and passing them on to the phone system as touch tones. There's even a Blutetooth-based device to pair an ancient phone with your cell phone, and make it work that way.

One thing for which I didn't find an answer is whether the European version of “Plain Old Telephone Service” (POTS), for which this phone was made, is compatible with the American version.

It's an interesting subject. There was one site which said you can get it to ring, it was a simple hack of how you connect the different colored wires.

Found out that those old phones rang differently in Europe, the US and Australia, well the same ring but for different lengths of time as to how it's spaced with the silence. But that should be a function of the provider, not the phone.

You would need a converter for the dial unless your local service hasn't phased out rotary dialing for some reason, and supposedly you would also need to calibrate the dial according to one site, which doesn't surprise me if I remember how many wrong numbers I used to get.

I'm kind of curious myself, we've got a couple of older phones, with buttons but one can also generate rotary dial tones, I think. They haven't been plugged in for a long time.

 

[Wyld Kard]

 

[Deplorable Yankee]

 

[kseeding]

I love this idea! Though it will be hard to find tv's like that nowadays.

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Dalia]

 

[Wyld Kard]

............

''''''''''''''

 

[Bob Blaylock]

I posted the following a few weeks ago, in a different thread, but this is where it really belongs…

——

About sixteen years ago, as I was coming near to the end of my time working at one thrift store, and getting ready to go back out into the Real World, an unusual vintage Minolta camera came through, which I ended up buying.

I am now coming close to the end of my time at a different thrift store, again getting ready to go out into the Real World. In the last week, an even more unusual vintage Minolta camera came through, and I bought it.

The larger camera, to the left, is a Minolta 110 Zoom SLR. That's the one I got in 2005. It takes 110 film, which was once a common 16-millimeter format, mostly used in small, cheap cameras. This was an unusual example of a higher-end camera made to take that film.

The smaller camera, to the right, is a Minolta 16-II. I just bought it yesterday [a few weeks ago, now]. It uses a proprietary 16-millimeter form format. I don't know if it's even possible to get film to fit it, these days. It's very similar in basic design and operation to the classic Minox cameras, most widely known as the cameras that spies are often depicted using in old movies to take pictures of secret documents. I don't know if Minolta copied Minox, or Minox copied Minolta. but in spite of the similar names, and in this case, remarkably similar products, they are completely unrelated brands.

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Michelle420]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

Corduroy bell bottoms

Velour shirts

 

[miketx]

 

[Baron Von Murderpaws]

View attachment 588977

OMG!!! I remember the very last diner in my area that had these. The place lasted till the end of the 80's before it was finally closed down.

So sad.