ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades Old Austrian phones

I finally took pictures of some of my old phones.



The W48 was the first post-WWII phone and supposedly manufactured from 1948 to the mid 1970ies. It was available in black and beige, some companies had custom colors made though. I've seen a green one for an underware store chain and I think there were a few red ones too. And I've got a caramel beige one (the standard beige was rather yellowish, called chamois). For a chamois one you had to pay up. The very first ones had a cloth cord, mine only has the woven handset cord, maybe the phone cord was replaced at some point. Some also had a round brown cloth handset cord. From about the mid 1950ies on there were only round plastic handset cords. The older ones originally had Zylmurbafi dials, but I guess those got replaced later. My dial is definitely "stolen" from a W80. The case was solid heavy bakelite and indestructible unless you smashed it on the floor.


Here's an inside shot. Pretty straightforward, about the only thing that could fail is the capacitor beneath the terminal block. Or the wires could break. Even today students of technical schools learn how to fix those phones.
Weird thing: the bells of those phones all sound slightly different. I've got 5 of them, and _none_ sound exactly the same.



The newer W74 model. Available in chamois and grey, inofficially also black. Produced from around 1973 to the late 80ies after it had long been replaced by the more modern W80.



Inside it's alreadfy got some more electronics, but not too much.


The party line relay box. To give you an idea of it's size I put a standard CD next to it.



Lots of stuff...

{Edited to get some images to display properly - Paul}


[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 05-18-2004).]