SC - Weird but cool kitchen gadgets

[Stefan li Rous]

'Lainie commented:
> Nope. Plain slimline phone- one of the real ones- it's an old Ma Bell.
> Kinda burnt orange, toned down enough that James said it wasn't _too_
> bad... Only problem being that you can't turn the ringer off.

Urr, umm. No, that is pretty easy to take care of. Back when it was just
Ma Bell, they used to charge by how many phones you had on the line and
were not very happy to find non-Bell equipment attached. Well, they
detected these extra phones by the ringer impedance. By opening the
phone and removing a wire you could disconnect the ringer. Two of the
four line are all that are used for telephone transmission. There was 
another oddity with the princess phones in that they used the fourth
line for something but I don't think this affects the phone you have.
It's been so long, I'm not sure of the wire names and colors. I'd have 
to look them up. Contact me off the list for more into.

The old Bell phones were built well. Since you only rented them, they
were meant to last. That phone may be as old as the SCA. Are the wires
inside cloth or plastic coated?
- -- 
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****