Posted 14 years ago
brett361975
(2 items)
I have here a brass Candle stick phone with a square brass dialer connected by phone wire. The numbers are pressed down like the keys on a typewriter. I can find no makers mark at all only a hand written serial number inside - (1614).
Can anyone help to age it ? identify it ? or possibly have any information about it.
It still has the GPO bakealite connecter on the end of the phone wire.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you
Regards
Brett
Great looking early "adjunct dialer"!
My fellow telephone collectors over at TCI's message board:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/singingwires/
tell me that this is called a "keysender", and was a British-made item, intended for use by PBX operators to avoid fatigue.
It's a "Keysender No. 5"
http://www.britishtelephones.com/keysend5.htm
Thanks very much for all your help, is it quite rare ? my grandma gave it to me years ago. It sat on the window sill since. Should I put it safe somewhere ? is it valuable ?
thanks again
Regards
Brett
You have a british speed dialer that was invented and manufactured circa 1929 by American and British telephone companies. The purpose was to reduce the the time it takes for an operator to dial a number.The operator would punch in a number as rapidly as possible and the automatic dialing mechanism would do the dialing while the operator went on to other calls. The operator could save 12 seconds on each call and by the end of the day adds up to many more calls per operator.
Thank you very much to all for the information. Would anyone care to put a value on it ? not that I would sell it, its been in my family for years but I would be interested to know if it has any value.
Kind regards and thanks again
Brett
I will get you a value after I talk to a couple of friends who own one. Your candlestick telephone model 150 was made in Britain by the Ibex Telephone Ltd. in 1927 for the British Post Office, who controlled most of the telephone systems in England.
Thanks Tom
Regards
Brett