It’s possible that some of you have never seen a rotary phone in real life. It’s likely that many of you have never used a rotary phone: heard the pulse take the place of the tone, mustered your patience as the dial rolls back it its reset, cursed a number with so many zeroes in it because it takes so long to call. And that’s a shame, because rotary phones are awesome: physical of a time when the home phone was home decor. Here are some of our faves.
Experimental telephone manufactured by LM Ericsson in the 1920s. Handset is made of hard rubber.
Photo: Tekniska museet
The m33, circa 1931, was the fruit of a collaboration between the Electric Bureau in Oslo and AB Alpha workshops in Sundbyberg. Designers: Jean Heiberg and Johan Christian Bjerknes.
Photo: Tekniska museet
Western Electric #202 desk phone, 1930s.
Photo: Mark Mathosian
Gilded table model of ivory, distributed to larger LM Ericsson customers, 1930s.
Photo: Tekniska museet
Triple rotary phone at the New York Stock Exchange master control panel, circa 1950.
Photo: George Pickow/Three Lions/Getty Images
Drive-in public phone from the 1950s.
Photo: Mark Mathosian
A 1950s woman using a telephone headset as she irons.
Photo: Al Barry/Three Lions/Getty Images
Ericofon, aka the cobra phone. Designed in the late 1940s by a design team including Gösta Thames, Ralph Lysell, and Hugo Blomberg. Made by Ericsson Company of Sweden, production began in 1954. It’s in MOMA now
Photo: Marcin Wichary/Holger.Ellgaard/Wikimedia Coommons
A red Swedish bakelite phone with unique vertical rotary dialer, 1955.
Photo: Tekniska museet
The Princess Phone was designed by Henry Dreyfuss and introduced by the Bell System in 1959.
Photo: Mark Mathosian
Another cool Swedish design: telephone embodied in the form of an aircraft, circa 1960.
Photo: Tekniska museet
This is rocket science: director of NASA Wernher von Braun on the phone, 1961.
Photo: Keystone/Getty Images//Joe Haupt
Not exactly telephone, but this photo must be here. A system for dialling for a drink: installed in the Flag Inn pub at Bromley Cross in Lancashire, UK. It was devised by thirsty electronics expert Dick Millington. October 1963.
Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
1964: A Japanese telephone operator in Tokyo use the new View Phone, made by Toshiba Shibaura Electric Co.
Photo: Keystone/Getty Images
Classic black bakelite phone from 1968.
Photo: Tekniska museet
Toshiba’s Model 500 View Phone, being tested at the company’s Tokyo headquarters, 1968.
Photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A transparent telephone at an exhibition, ‘This Super-Phonic Age’ produced by London’s Telephone Service at Gamages Store, London, 1969.
Photo: Michael Webb/Keystone/Getty Images
Phone with a dial built into the handset, c1970.
Photo: Theron LaBounty
The Disco Queen, from the collection of the Museum of Communications in Seattle, probably from the Seventies.
Photo: Marcin Wichary
1977 Western Electric Sculptura.
Jeff Booker demonstrating his prize-winning ‘phone of the future’ design, 1982.
Photo: Central Press/Getty Images
We’re sure you have a favorite rotary phone design. Show us in the comments!
(Top image by: Tekniska museet.)
