Item #0004 – Western Electric Model 500 rotary phone (1967)

Does anyone have a landline anymore? For the first time in 11 years, we do (-100 hipster millennial points), but that’s because we are temporarily living in the parsonage. To be honest, I don’t even know the number for this phone (+27 slacker millennial points).

Around 2006-ish, I bought this phone on ebay because that’s what people without kids do–buy impractical items for decoration. It looked cool on the dresser in our bedroom…collecting dust. It was fun to let the littles play with it and make pretend phone calls…while constantly avoiding the strangulation hazard brought on by the phone’s two cords. While having a conversation on my “real” phone, I would play with the spinning rotary dial…while wondering about the ominous phone number printed in the middle of the dial. (Does this number belong to a creeper or a nice old lady? A creeper-on-the-inside, nice-on-the-outside old lady?! You just never know these days!)

According to Wikipedia, most phones during the 20th century were leased by one of the Bell Operating Companies (“Ma Bell”) which were all owned by AT&T before its divestiture in 1984. Western Electric was AT&T’s manufacturing arm and produced phones in a multitude of colors. Toward the end of the 1960s, Western Electric started stamping “BELL SYSTEM PROPERTY – NOT FOR SALE” on the bases of their phones. This was also around the time touch-tone service and the push-button keypad were introduced. The 1960s also brought the 505A four-pronged plug that connected the phone to the wall jack. Model 500s are still used today by die-hard fans that value its quality and endurance through the decades.

With all that, doesn’t it just look cool to have a pretend conversation with this talking communication machine?

Status: Item sold on 8/18/16.

Random For You:

You can buy adapters online for 505A plugs that have a modular connector on one end allowing you to plug in a Model 500 into a modern wall jack. Search for “4 prong to modular adapter.” I found this one on Amazon.

After the breakup of the Bell system, regional “Baby Bells” were created that were precursors of what we know as our present day AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink companies.

Area codes were created by…you guessed it…AT&T in the 1940s with the first customer-dialed long distance call using an area code made in November 1951, from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California.