Western Union.

Western Union is still around but they are only in the "wire cash" business. No more telegrams.

Now, if I could find a collector.....

These days that is usually Ebay. I always look to see how rare something is there before I think I have something special. I do think the Colt disconnect is pretty rare tho.

Sorry, but what is it? (The Western Union item). And I wonder what had to be "three times" ?

It's a phenolic faceplate with a knob on it that was turned in order to sound a bell for the Western Union guy. My guess as to the instruction to turn it 3 times is that it was installed in a building that had more than 1 place to pick up packages from.

Maybe the mailroom sounded once, the secretarial pool sounded twice and the boss's office was thrice so that Western Union guy knew where to pick up the outgoing telegram from.

It came from an office building in Manhattan, NYC. The office was on the 9th floor, and was vacant during the demo portion of the project.

I have no idea as to how old the device is, but the paper label (file tag) may be a clue.

Ghost307 has the right methodology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lN_KC_XnW4
OK, You guys got the song stuck in my head again! #5 hit in 1967.

Silly me .... for decades I thought that primal (primate) tune was done by a certain arboreal (tree living) group .....

Thanks for that blast from the past Joe!!