AN ICONIC VINTAGE 1959 SIEMENS BROTHERS HAND CRANK TELEPHONE

HELLO CAN YOU CONNECT ME? AN ICONIC VINTAGE 1959 SIEMENS BROTHERS HAND CRANK TELEPHONE

AN AWESOME 1950S SIEMENS BROTHERS LONDON HANDCRANK TELEPHONE. THIS PHONE WOOD HAVE BEEN A FACTORY INTER ROOM HAND CRANK PHONE DATING FROM 1959. WILL LOOK STUNNING IN YOUR HOME, STUDY OR OFFICE. AN ICONIC SYMBOL: OF THE PAST.
 
Hand-crank telephones were the dominant household telephone during the late 1800s and the early decades of the 20th century.The crank would ring a bell at the operators office or switchboard and inform the operator someone needed to a make the connection to make a call. Hand crank phones were the first consumer telephones, which worked by electrical generators that used magnets to create electric current. Turning the crank rotated the magneto, causing a bell to ring that would alert the operator or another party on the line that an individual wanted to make a call. At that time there was no direct dial system. All calls were made by a person actively connecting actual cables through connection systems to link the phones together.
 
The first telephone lines were called party lines, where multiple households were all connected on the same line. Anyone wanting to use the phone would need to wait until the line was available, and privacy was limited, as any household on the same party line could eavesdrop on others conversations. By 1878, the first switchboards opened, allowing phone customers to make calls to people who werent on the same party line. Today switchboards are automated, but in their earliest form they required a human operator to physically connect one line with another. Rather than simply dialing a number, early callers needed to verbally tell the operator the city, state and phone number of the person they were attempting to call in order to be connected. As long distance service grew, the lines might be handed off to other operators to make the connections from one system to another.
 
CONDITION: IN GOOD STRUCTURAL CONDITION.
 
MARKINGS: SIEMENS SOUTH AFRICA 1959
 
Size 15CM WIDE 15CM HIGH 24CM DEEP
 
SIEMENS:
Siemens first business activities in South Africa date back to 1860, when the companys English affiliate Siemens, Halske & Co (from 1865: Siemens Brothers) received an order to supply equipment for the continents first electrical communications link, a telegraph line connecting Cape Town with the British naval base at Simons Town. In the decades to follow, Siemens also equipped several telegraph offices and supplied telecommunications cables and telephones as well as equipment for the generation of electric lighting. Local operations were conducted via independent agencies. In 1880, G. A. Boettger in Cape Town became Siemens Brothers sole representative in South Africa. 
 
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