4 ms·
That 746 photo certainly looks identical to the standard NZ unit, right down to the removable cover in the centre-top (which in big fancy offices was host to an
by thombat 7y ago
That 746 photo certainly looks identical to the standard NZ unit, right down to the removable cover in the centre-top (which in big fancy offices was host to an extra switch for some kind of PABX function [possibly just a safer cradle-rest-tap for transferring calls?]. These switches were long rectangles and usually made of clear plastic like a small version of HAL9000's logic blocks - in the days before the BT phone jack reached NZ (around 1987) it was as exotic as anyone's phone could get - we used to salivate over UK electronic magazines and the riot of innovation on display: not just alternative handsets but even directly connected modems rather than acoustic couplers.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoAye that switch sounds identical too. There was also some sort of extra switch set that was like a matching base, with 3 or 4 extra switches, that I only ever saw in a movie or two. Both illustrated on that Wikipedia page. Exotic was the arrival of the phone plug. Two phone points in the house and a push button phone, which usually still had a bell. The peak of 80s luxury. By the 90s I wanted a second line as the USRobotics Courier thing was always hogging the phone. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPO_telephones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPO_telephones