Nearly two years ago I wrote an article about a pair of Mahogany telephones made by Western Electric. About a year later I was lucky enough to come upon another example of this color—one that is not commonly found in a set of this vintage.

From my collection is this brown (Mahogany) Model 500 made by Western Electric.

1957 Mahogany Western Electric

The first of the plastic color Model 500’s were made in 1953.  Those colors were Ivory, Moss Green, Dark Gray (Oxford Gray) and Cherry Red.  In 1954 colors that were introduced were Mediterranean Blue, Pastel Yellow, Dark Beige (Rose Beige) and Mahogany.  These brown sets were discontinued in 1957, making a very short run of three years for this color.  A while ago I came upon an example of a Mahogany Western Electric that had lived a rough life.  Come with me as I take you along on my journey to refurbish this great piece of American history. Read the rest of this post »

One of my latest telephone refurbish projects is this handsome North Electric “Galion” phone.  So called because it was manufactured by the North Electric Company of Galion, Ohio.  Early models of this phone were made with metal housings but were later made of Bakelite.

North Electric "Galion" Phone

Although North Electric (not to be confused with Northern Electric of Canada) did manufacture their own dials, they also released phones with dials from other manufacturers.  This particular telephone was made in 1953 with an Automatic Electric rotary dial. Read the rest of this post »

Western Electric Model 302 - E1 Handset

A woman in Massachusetts sent me her Western Electric Model 302 to be refurbished. Her father had given her the phone years ago to use as a toy. She had told me how as a young girl she played “operator” using this classic old telephone. She would emulate Lilly Tomlin’s character from the 1960’s television show, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In by dialing a number and pretending to be the operator. Now many years later with a family of her own, she wants the phone to look nice again as well as being a usable working telephone. There was one unusual aspect of the telephone however, that was mentioned as a “by the way” type of thing. Read the rest of this post »

Some ten days after I began this project the Western Electric Model 354 wall phone is finally ready to hang on the wall. I had ordered some replacement rubber dial gaskets so that I could put a new one between the dial and the housing of the phone. They apparently got lost in the mail but eventually reached me and the project could go forward. Read the rest of this post »