A meandering discussion in the comments section of a post by everybody's favorite Retrotechnologist sent me to Google, where I found the Coolest. Cellphone. EVAR.
That kid with the iPhone and tatts will be stunned, shattered, and crushed into total unhipness when a bell starts ringing in your messenger bag and you haul out, not some goofy little electronic device playing the recording of a phone over its tinny speaker, but an actual, honest, Vishnu-on-a-velocipede Telephone. With a dial. And no cord. You would be like unto the god of the coffeehouse...
Oooooo, YEAH. I'm good with the all-black one; it'll go good with the Studebaker. When I get one.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a steal at $300 smackers! UGH!
ReplyDeleteWhat price Starbucks domination?
ReplyDeleteOh man..... that is a keeper!
ReplyDeleteI wonder where I could get a belt holster for it?
Pshaw!
ReplyDeleteI have EXACTLY that phone but can do you one better, it's a got a 50ft curl cord, has got to be plugged in to work, and it's all original.
Cell, schmell.
I understand it may outlive me. the only thing I don't get is once i a while some drunk guy with a Russian accent sez " Meester President?"
The tech notes are cool. Do the contacts of the leaf switch really have a little bead of liquid held in suspension to protect the contacts?
ReplyDeleteCould this be applied to telegraph keys?
That loud, high pitch sound you hear is me audibly lusting after this.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd much prefer a phone that I could plug my iPhone into rather than having to do the whole sim thing.
I wonder how hard that would be to construct? It's been way too long of doing anything even closely resembling soldering much less any circuit work, so I don't think it'd be in my capacity. But still, how friggin' cool is THAT?
$100 off for the all-black version, then swap out the shell if you must have some other color.
ReplyDeleteI'm lustin' after it, bigtime. Though the Bluetooth Old-School handsets are awf'ly nice and portabiler, too.
Turk, I find it hard to believe a drop of any liquid would stay put on the contacts...and not get all gunked up. But maybe they're applying Cramolin or suchlike, which is said to leave a protective film.
--Ma Ball runs some 48V (+/- my bad memory) on phone circuits for talk voltage plus ringing pulses in the 110V range, which tends to keep the contacts happy; these phones don't use near that much for talk voltage (nor are they pushing much current) and the ringing pulses are way spiky, so some help there is a good thing.
Captcha: monomet. Make of it what you will.
oh that's hilarious...that's better than my retro bluetooth handset. of course, the looks i get for using THAT are bad enough...heh.
ReplyDeleteOh yes. WANT!!!
ReplyDeleteThe perfect portable phone.
When I first got cellular service, it was for my business line. I wanted a desktop phone, complete with speakerphone, that I could use with it. Sadly, I found nothing.
ReplyDeleteUntil now.
I've *got* one of those in my basement, salvaged from my grandparents' house after my grandmother passed away.
ReplyDeleteOnly it's older. That one looks vintage 1960s. The one I have - black, of course, is like 1930s...
I have (or had, maybe) one of those phones I picked up at the local auction house, from LANL or SNL or possibly just KAFB, in a nice OD green. It's either in one of these boxes full of crap I can never seem to dispose of, or, well, occasionally I do have a fit of cleaning.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if they charge less to convert an existing phone.
Of course, sending text messages with a rotary dial is going to suck...
My in-laws have a wall mount rotary phone that they're still using in their kitchen. It still works fine...
ReplyDeleteI want to use it on a plane while taxiing to the gate.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't get the appeal. This is essentially like the semi-auto revolver isn't it?
ReplyDeleteHey Tam, I use a ThinkGeek retro handset with my iPhone... gets me curious looks wherever I go!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7478943&l=43df19bfb4&id=605750413
You guys would love my house. Most of the phones in it were from what my father pulled out of the trash when his then employer upgraded to modern digital system. I still have a coupla rotary wall phones sitting unused on a basement shelf..
ReplyDeleteAnd oh, if you want the pushbutton version of the desk phone, you can still buy them - they're about 40-50 bucks new from ITT Corelco. Smithgear sells 'em in bulk, too.
Well, the phones are GSM based. Unfortunately, two of the larger US wireless networks use CDMA, not GSM. More than 50% of the cell networks in the US won't work with this phone
ReplyDeleteJust a point of info.
eh, friend of mine already did it.
ReplyDeleteWith a candlestick phone.
Has another in the house that's cordless to a base station.
Yes, he's nuts.
Ok, I agree. That is cool and definately on the buy list. I will order one up just for the humor of it and dump my spare sim card in it for use at work.
ReplyDeleteTexting with it would be dreadfully slow ...
ReplyDeleteI want a working Motorola brick phone.
ReplyDelete