These wierd letters are the letters that were used on Austrian phone dials from 1927 until the early 1960ies.
Letters were:
1 I
2 F
3 A
4 B
5 R
6 U
7 M
8 L
9 Y
0 Z

Read backwards you get the nickname of these old phones - ZYLMURBAFI. Subscriber numbers were 1 letter, 5 numbers, e.g. A 25 387. In my area the changeover occurred in 1961, in 1962 the numbers were changed again (from letters to 32 xx xx, then to 34 xx xx and 34 xx xxx)
I've never seen a real ZYLMURBAFI, it seems that the dials were all changed. Today there are only very few rotary phones in service, the post office took them back during the changeover to digital switching, only by special request you could keep them, many people were even made believe that rotary phones don't work any more.

Somebody over on a telecoms forum mentioned that a kid who upon seeing a rotary dial phone for the first time had no idea how to use it! He'd never seen anything but TouchTone phones before!

Was there any significance to the choice of letters on those old Austrian dials? Or for the peculiar sequence?

In the early days of dial service in some American cities the local phone companies also used their own peculiar dial arrangements with the first digit of the number listed as a letter. Perhaps N,S,E, or W for the points of the compass or by using something relating to a local neighborhood, e.g. R for Riverside. I think it would have been mostly the independent companies in those very early days, as the Bell System remained very operator-oriented.

This is all I know about it. I got the information from a web site that was rather inaccurate. For example it said that letters were used only until 1948, but this was only the time when the new system was introduced, the changeover took until about the mid 1960ies.
When a friend of one of my younger brothers visited us (I guess he was 8 or 9 back then) suddenly our phone rang. The kid was completely confused until I answered the phone. He'd never heard a phone with a real bell in it.

I grew up in a house with a "real phone" -- a Western Electric #500 (standard issue telephone until the 1980s). It was ivory, but tended to look more pink to me.

My mom didn't get touch-tone until 1994 when she decided to buy a telephone/answerer combo. It had one of those electronic buzzers that sounded like a cricket.

A few years later I moved out and found the old phone. Some cleaning and replacing of the cracked and worn modular connectors (easily obtained from an electronics parts vendor) the phone was as good as new.

I also had to replace the earpiece. For some reason it had gone bad from years of non-use. The friendly phone company guy at work helped me with that one and got me the little speaker!

After years of living with these electronic beepers at home, the sound of a ringing bell took some getting used to. The first couple of days I would visibly jump and get startled at the loud RING! RING! RING!

A ZYLMURBAFI???hahaha! Man, you Austrians are weird....but I love you anyway!

(hope to visit Vienna some day, it seems like my kind of city ... OLD!)

I now have two #500s (black and ivory with the real dial), a #2500 (pushbutton version in black) and a Princess phone (pushbutton, found in garbage pile). I "rotate" them regularly (only have one phone box in the flat).

I've seen lots of old phones with shot mouthpieces. In my experience, the Schrack mouthpieces used in Austrian phones go bad much more often than the earpieces.
I have about every model that was released by our GPO from 1948 onwards wired as extensions. These are Kapsch or Schrack (2 companies that had more or less a monopoly on phone equipment) W48 (wall or desk phone, available in chamois (yellowish white) and black, I only got the desk phone, and a color that officially didn't exist, caramel.)
W74 (wall and desk phone in chamois, light grey and desk phone in a beautiful dark red, _very_ rare. I have the chamois and grey desk phone and a chamois wall phone)
W80 (available in various colors, with rotary dial, I got a Post Office yellow one), TAP 80 (keypad, without redial and similar extra functions, same colors as W80)
TAP 80K (touchtone dial with redial etc., still in widespread use, the wall phone looked like W74 with keypad),
TAP90 (flat, modern phone, all electronic) and T95 (today's phone, very flat, ugly dark grey with green keypad).
I grew up with a chamois W74 party line phone, until 1992 when we got digital switching and a blue TAP 80K plus a red TAP 90 on an extension.
Now I've got a black W48 on my desk, and when I'm really busy working on my computer the bell almost gives me a heart attack, even though I have the phone since 1999.

Hey, it's 1920ies humor, you can't expect to be able to find out what a GPO official back then was thinking! I'm not even sure if the letter sequence is actually correct, but I know it was something weird, so it could be correct.
Besides, we think the Americans are weird, probably we're just different.
You'll really like Vienna, it's a nice oldfashioned city, even though we keep getting new futuristic buildings everywhere.
One advantage some of my classmates found during their stay in NYC: You don't get decapitated when sticking your head out of an old window! *gg* (We have mostly casement windows instead of the US guillotine types, and in NYC most of us lived in rather rundown houses)

It will come as no surprise to those of you who are aware of my telecoms background that I have quite a few old phones around the house!

I grew up in England with the GPO 700-series, which was the nearest British equivalent of the Western Electric 500. I also have some older WE-500 phones, the pre-modular types and a Princess rotary-dial model.

On the lovely sound of the old bells, some frineds of mine nearby have just been remodeling their home and I've just supplied them with an ex-Bell System 500 set in yellow for their living room.

Apparently it made for quite a conversation piece when some relatives visited them recently. They love the sound of the ring (more pleasant-sounding than that of the old British 700 phones), although it made one of the kids jump when it rang right next to him! I guess he'd never heard anything but the modern chirp-chrip phone either.

Paul,

Interestingly Eircom (or Telecom Eireann / P&T as it was) in Ireland generally supplied Northern Telecom phones

This was the pretty standard one from nortel from the early 1980s on:

(I think this could be a BT version.. ours had (R) (*) and (#) since they launched.

This was the other standard issue phone (Designed in Denmark):


and who can accuse Telecom Eireann of having no taste. This phone was around for a while: quite a popular 1980s st patricks day gift! Extremely valuable collectable item.

In the P&T days these were the norm:

Previously they were a little more like this and came in Black, Ivory (kinda beige), or Red..



These were practically unbreakable ...

There was a wall mounted version that looked like this:


(ours were identical but without generally without the dial letters)

Not all that similar to BT / GPO.



[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-04-2003).]

DJK,

That black one with the rotary dial is the Western Electric #500. That's the one I grew
up with (in ivory)!! I also found the black one in the trash some years ago at school.

Also, who remembers the British GEC GEC-O-Phone? Similar looking to the American 500 but the handset was bigger and more delicate looking and more ergonomic I think.

I have a very shoddy example at home. The case has a missing chunk in a corner and the coiledhandset cord has a tear in the outer jacket and is missing the strain relief grommet that goes into the receiver. It still works though (I have to redo the bell also - new capacitor).

It belongs(ed) to my grandmother....she installed it in her house in Colombia when she lived there.

I'm looking for an example in much better shape, but alas they're not found here in the 'States....I also need a new coiled handset cord and grommet for the one I have. Wonder if they're still easy to get.

[This message has been edited by SvenNYC (edited 05-05-2003).]

They must have been made to a very similar design (or possibily the same design). It's definitely made by Northern Telecom the one here even says "Northern Telecom" and "P+T" on the dial.

On the bottom "Northen Telecom, Made in Ireland" and a little metal wheel for adjusting the volume of the bell.

Wired up to a "headphone jack" style (but with 4 rings) old P+T connector .. (pre 1978 when they started installing RJ11 sockets)

.....


.....

It took me a few seconds to figure out the shape of that green wall phone -- It's certainly distinctive!

I'm wondering if that black 500 set pictured was made for Canada. The normal American version would have "Operator" marked on the zero digit, but I've seen several come from the Canadian market which omit that. Can any of our members from Great White North confirm whether the absence of the "operator" marking on zero was the norm for Canada?

Some of the other non-Bell companies made 500-style phones, but with some minor variations. If you look at some Automatic Electric/Stromberg Carlson models, for example, you see that the dial spacing was slightly different so that the zero ended up right at the bottom.

Here's a British GPO 746 phone in mustard yellow:



This type was introduced around 1967, although the 706 model it replaced was very similar.

The internal layout is different than the 500 sets:




Compared to this GPO model, the 500 has the bells at the rear and the network circuitry incorporated into a sealed unit.

The GPO 700-series handsets are also quite a bit bulkier than the American WE500 equivalents.

{ Edit on 4/22/05 due to images no longer being where they were 2 years ago! }



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 04-22-2005).]

Yeah the Northern Telecom version that P+T had here had 2 bells at the back and the network circuitry was under clear plastic.

It had no letters at all. Not just missing OPER

Letter codes were never used here. They're used for advertising purposes a lot these days and since the 80s eircom phones have had them printed on. You get plenty of 1800-CHORUS or 1800-EIRCOM .. 1850-4COFFEE etc. Lots of US version phones hit the market here too during the 80s they worked perfectly except for 1 minor detail.. "Flash" would hang up on the call rather than answer call waiting.. easily over come by just quickly tapping the "hook". The equivilant of "Flash" here is basically a pulse dialled 1. They ship in English with RJ11 plugs so they're perfect for the job British imports often wouldn't ring even with adaptors.

There were and are lots of north american phones around working quite happily on eircom lines.

Loads of US GE Caller ID moduels and phones too. they seem happy enough to work with irish caller ID

The lines here seem to accept pretty much any type of dialling.. Have tried all the settings..tone dialling as as long as it's at least 20ms with 10ms gaps. min is understood.
Pulse dialling at any speed.. there's a japanese phone here with very fast pulsing and it works fine.

What would sometimes throw US modems is the "routing tone" that switches here can produce if they're particularly busy or waiting for something.. I think you get silence elsewhere?

Someone recorded what it's like calling a mobile phone from what I'd guess was an Irish Alcatel E10 exchange... it plays the routing tone while waiting for the GSM network to send a ringing signal..
http://telephonetribute.com/audio/irish_callingcell.wav
Same in France?

Couple of other weird tones I've only heard in Ireland
Unconditional call forwarding active: http://telephonetribute.com/audio/irish_forwardingactive.wav

and Message waiting http://telephonetribute.com/audio/irish_messagewaiting.wav

Modems & faxes seem to see it as a continious dial tone as there are no gaps and generally work fine with it.


[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-07-2003).]

Paul,

Yup...that's the same phone I'm looking for parts for. Do you have any idea where I could get them?

I also need the screws that hold the ringer hammer (with the coils) assembly to the base...

DJK,
Yes, the rapid routing tone is also a feature of the French network, but we've never had it in Britain. These days, of course, with everything digital calls to regular landlines anywhere in the country start ringing almost as soon as you take your finger off the last digit, but back in the Strowger days all you'd get between dialing and ringing starting was the background sounds of switches stepping and trunk noise. Calls to cellular phones these days generally just give a few seconds silence while the system contacts the phone to start the ringing.

Lines with voicemail here use an interrupted dial-tone as the message-waiting indicator, the timing making it sound very similar to an American busy signal. Some modems have problems with that, and report no dial tone.

The CO equipment here has similar problems with the the flash/recall timing. On some imported phones it's impossible to use the recall feature, and you have to just flash the hook-switch instead. The default flash setting on many modems is also too long for the British system.

Sven,
I'm afraid I don't have any of the spares you're looking for that I could offer you at the moment, but 700-series phones are pretty easy to come by here. Have you tried searching the telephone category on eBay (use the "located in U.K." option). There are almost always loads of 746 phones on there, and if you can find one with a dirty or damaged case you could pick it up very cheaply and use it for spares.

Paul,

Normally, at least if you're calling a fixed line you'll just get a ringing tone once you dial the last digit but the routing tone does appear now and again.

It was much more common when there were still a few crossbars on the local network. The "parent" Alcatel E10 would produce it for a few seconds while the older exchange was doing the final local switching stages.

You'll still hear it before a mobile phone rings (on some exchanges). It also pops up if you call a number that lets calls queue until a hunt group line is free e.g. some operator services that don't have "please hold" announcements in place.

Also international calls to countries that either have old networks or where connection isn't instantanious.

basically anytime there might be a silence before the ring tone/engaged tone/announcement.

Although I've noticed a couple of "bebebe"s when calling normal land lines from some remote rural spots. Not sure why.. there are no non-digital switches and signalling is all SS7.. maybe just an early E10 with slow processing.

The older (long gone) Ericsson ARF crossbars used to make a soft very regular "tick tick tick" noise while they were switching. I don't think it was just the noise generated by the switching process it was actually a specifically generated "tone". Sounded like a clock ticking followed by a clunk (generated by the switching process) before ringing.

Strangely enough ARFs usually accepted tone dialling but would return the "wrong number tritone" if you dialled * or # or just ignore it completely. The number didn't seem to be translated to pulses either, at least not that you could hear. I think they were quite possibily, like in Australia, retrofitted with computer controls and some electronic registers etc. i.e. kinda hybrid crossbars. I know they could provide call diversion and call waiting.
I'd say that the partial computerisation was prob. so they could handle non-unit based billing and detailed statements etc. I doubt provision of tone dialling was a huge priority.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-09-2003).]

djk,
I like that green Ireland phone!.
I once saw over here, a telephone hand set that was in the shape of New Zealand, under the name "Kiwi-Phone".
It died a death though, it was found that the hand-set was too cumbersome and way out of proportion.
If you can imagine the shape of New Zealand, the earpiece was in Auckland and the mouthpiece was in Invercargill.
I've never seen one since, oddly enough!.