Posted 13 years ago
Alida
(1 item)
Does anyone know the authenticity of this phone and how to find out what ship it may have been on???
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This is very nice, never seen anything like it.
@ilikeart~it is what some of us thought to be a "unique" item. seems there are three of us so far that i have found on this sight.
@ttom~i saw your phone and it is a bit different. there is another one on here that they say they have hooked up and is actually being used as a dial phone.
Could "CH staff" be Chief of Staff?
My Dad and Brother are/were both Navy. Dad served on the Shangrila and the O'Bannon. Not sure what ship my brother was on. He has passed away and we don't have any of his military records.
Do you still have the phone?
I found a picture of the same model phone installed on the USS Salem,
a heavy cruiser WWII era on the following site. I also have a phone like this. http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/12/the-uss-salems-steam.html
I just saw a phone like this on 'American Pickers'. Unfortunately I didn't get to see what was said about it. I'll have to look up the Monday April 23rd. episodes.
Did anyone see what they said about this phone?
ttomtucker, Thanks for bringing this back to the front page. Story number 31601 is pretty old in Collectors Weekly Show & Tell terms.
Google/Google Lens turned up some twins/near twins, including the one in your post (an even older CW story):
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/20695-navy-admirals-command-telephone
An even older CW story (4161)!:
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/4161-automatic-electric-type-d
This WorthPoint listing is mostly good for the tidbit that the phone weighs about 32 pounds. Yeah, that would sit well in a hip pocket. };-)
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/flagship-admiral-nautical-naval-1868884568
One that had been installed on the USS Missouri:
https://hamptonroadsnavalmuseum.blogspot.com/2020/09/vj-day-artifact-series-part-3-uss.html
Technical tidbits:
*snip*
Automatic Electric Type D - Ship Phone / Intercom -- Based on AE40 components plus an amplifier for hands-free operation. Lines are marked for ship's departments: engine, radio, etc. Nice anchor motif on the brass speaker covers. Typically used on large vessels, such as battleships and aircraft carriers. Ships phone functions were handled through a Strowger step switch. Intercom lines were directly wired point-to-point.
*snip*
http://www.paul-f.com/curious.htm
More pictures, including one with the housing removed:
https://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=17948.0
The Pawn Stars TV show segment wherein somebody brought a similar phone to the Gold & Silver Pawn shop:
Pawn Stars: Old Man's TOUGH NEGOTIATION for a HISTORIC Navy Phone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNtPE4LEp5M
About the Automatic Electric company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Electric
About Almon B. Strowger:
*snip*
Truly, necessity is the mother of invention.
Imagine you’re an undertaker working in Kansas City in the late 19th century. You’re one of just two undertakers serving a city of more than 50,000 people, so business must be booming, right?
Not if your competitor is stealing all of your clients.
Legend has it that Almon Brown Strowger found himself in this exact position in the 1870s and 1880s. The wife of the other undertaker in town worked at the local telephone exchange, and whenever a caller would ask for Strowger’s services, she’d put the call through to her husband, instead. This left Strowger’s business in grave straits.
His complaints to the telephone company proved unfruitful, so Strowger took matters into his own hands — by cobbling together hat pins and electromagnets into the first automated telephone exchange.
*snip*
https://www.sparkmuseum.org/almon-b-strowger-the-undertaker-who-revolutionized-telephone-technology/
https://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/10/03/strowger_switch_the_19th_century_design_invention_that_flipped_the_phone.html
Strowger's 1892 patent:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US486909A/en