The old phone you can still buy new today - Cortelco 250044

The satisfying thunk of putting the phone back on the receiver is a feeling I miss. There was a whole tactile experience that is lost nowadays with touchscreens.

I love how the ring lingers into the next clip

I was at a customer's house a week or two ago and they still have a rotary phone connected, sitting on their roll top desk. They are still using it!

Cortelco was originally the Kellogg Switchboard company which was based in Chicago. They made phones that serviced a lot of the middle of the country. The Kellogg Red Bar is almost as iconic as the Western Electric 302, also known as the Lucy Phone. Kellogg eventually changed hands due to some mergers and changed its name to ITT, so your old phone was made by the same company technically. The 502 was Western Electric's replacement for the old 302, but there were so many 302s still in service that they came up with a new outer shell, number plate and dial ring that looked like a 502, but fit on a 302 chassis so they could refurbish the older, but still serviceable, 302s and make them look like the new 502. They were the 5302 model. They usually retain the old 302 handset and the body is a bit shorter than a 502 so they are easy to spot.

Everyone seems to want a red rotary phone nowadays, myself included 😄

The bells on the older phones was often very much NEEDED to be absurdly LOUD, As many only had 1 phone and you needed to hear it ring where ever in the house you were. My entire childhood (1960's-70's) we only had 1 phone in a three bedroom house (in the living room). It was not until about 1979 when my mother "Splurged" and had a second phone installed (In her bedroom!).

In Germany, we had a similar phone, when the phone infrastructure was owned by Deutsche Post. They sold an iconic green touch type phone for decades.

I'm a mid-60s kid, and in the 1970s our 'Ma-Bell' phone was the wall mount version of that, in the center hallway with a LONG cord attached to the receiver. And the ringer was like a fire alarm going off!! VWestlife, thanks for the phone memories!!

I've still got my old rotary hanging in the garage in the same spot since 1984.

Model 500s and their predecessors were made to last through many deployments. When a customer moved, the phones would be returned to Western Electric for testing/refurbishment. Since the equipment was always owned by ATT (or the local bell) and leased to the customer, making quality equipment made sense. My father worked for Southern Bell for 32 years, and as a kid I would hang out with him and learned what I could about phones. I would get some "hand me down" test equipment, could climb a pole and change service to another pair, and our house had a phone in every room (which was a crazy luxury in the 60's). I saved every years flip card catalog with styles and colors of phones customers could order. I always thought I would start and end my career with a local bell like he did, but then...1984.

The ring definitely sounds way better on the OG. Really love these phones. Wish I could still use one.

The clips from the OG NCIX Tech Tips with Linus was *chef's kiss*...

Completely blew the grandkids’ minds when I called one of their mobile phones using our 1930s Danish rotary phone. 😂

Core memory unlocked: my mother dialing a long distance call with a rotary phone using a blue bic ball pen.

God, this makes me want to have a lanline again.

I bought one old one for my niece as a play phone. But it works. So once in awhile I get a call from my brother's house line and the classic fuzzy voice comes through! It's great.

When I was a newborn my father took their phone apart and removed the bells. He said they still knew someone was calling cause the mechanism that struck the bells would make a vibration, but since as you pointed out there was no way to turn off the bell completely, this was his way of making sure no one woke me up after my mom spent 2 hours getting me to fall asleep! 😁

The Bucket residence, the lady of the house speaking!

Wow my whole childhood just flashed in front of my eyes. Thank you so much for this video.

You can actually adjust the ringer to a position which effectively turns it off, but you must remove the top to do so. There is a spring metal stop that you pull back and it allows you to turn the volume control wheel one click further in the quiet direction. It basically puts the bells so close together that the hammer can't move. If afterwards you decide you want to hear the phone ring again, all you need to do is turn the phone over and rotate the wheel in the loud direction. You'll hear a click as the wheel goes to the minimum volume position, and if you try to turn it back to the silent position, you won't be able to, not without taking the cover back off and pulling that spring stop back again. This was a feature on purpose described in the 500 service manual.