New old tech and old old tech I read this piece on the BBC News website the other day…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31647697
…and it prompted me to take to my keyboard and share a photograph of my latest vintage(ish) technology find.
I saw this bright red Direct Line telephone in a Daventry charity shop and just had to buy it. Stupidly pleased, excited even, I took the phone home and showed it to the wife and kids – it got the thumbs up, even from Mrs Baldwin, though her approval was more begrudging.
However, the phone is not promoted in my seventies stuff gallery because it’s just not that vintage - 1990s more than 1970s. I used to have a GPO twist dial equivalent (also pictured) that would have been featured in the gallery had I not sold it on ebay some years before I created this site.
It was partly that phone that prompted the purchase of the latest one. My wife delights in sharing a story about me that I think highlights my resilience and dogged determination, but that she thinks showcases my DIY shortcomings.
I bought the GPO unit in the year 2000 or thereabouts; it came with the vintage wiring which meant that I couldn’t use it without attaching a new connector/jack. The challenge that I had was that the colour coding for the wiring changed over the years and I had to figure out which order the four wires went in.
These days, one would just get on the internet and find the solution in seconds, back then though, this wasn’t an option and so I resorted to trial and error.
Do you remember the game Mastermind? It required one player to guess the colours and order of the pegs that the other player had hidden behind a screen. With notepad to hand, this was the approach I adopted to resolving the phone wiring conundrum – I tried combination after combination until the phone worked. It took hours and hours of effort and after much stress and frustration, I finally succeeded.
I remember the success, the fist-pumping, joyous, result orientated hollering and full-on sense of achievement.
Mrs Baldwin remembers the expletives on the long journey to that success! More than a decade later, her occasional advice when I am contemplating something I am not exactly qualified for – “remember the red phone”.
When I got home after making the purchase of the new red phone, I announced its arrival with the line “remember the red phone…
“…well check out this baby.”
The good news, it works perfectly and has the right connection to plug it straight in. It looks cool, sounds great and is a lot more practical to use because of the push buttons; the star and hashtag make navigating automated menus doable where the old twist dial fails.
Back to the BBC article that prompted this post; whilst I don’t feel any need/desire to watch a black and white television or replace my laptop with a typewriter, I still love a telephone that has an old-fashioned bell ring.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-31647697
…and it prompted me to take to my keyboard and share a photograph of my latest vintage(ish) technology find.
I saw this bright red Direct Line telephone in a Daventry charity shop and just had to buy it. Stupidly pleased, excited even, I took the phone home and showed it to the wife and kids – it got the thumbs up, even from Mrs Baldwin, though her approval was more begrudging.
However, the phone is not promoted in my seventies stuff gallery because it’s just not that vintage - 1990s more than 1970s. I used to have a GPO twist dial equivalent (also pictured) that would have been featured in the gallery had I not sold it on ebay some years before I created this site.
It was partly that phone that prompted the purchase of the latest one. My wife delights in sharing a story about me that I think highlights my resilience and dogged determination, but that she thinks showcases my DIY shortcomings.
I bought the GPO unit in the year 2000 or thereabouts; it came with the vintage wiring which meant that I couldn’t use it without attaching a new connector/jack. The challenge that I had was that the colour coding for the wiring changed over the years and I had to figure out which order the four wires went in.
These days, one would just get on the internet and find the solution in seconds, back then though, this wasn’t an option and so I resorted to trial and error.
Do you remember the game Mastermind? It required one player to guess the colours and order of the pegs that the other player had hidden behind a screen. With notepad to hand, this was the approach I adopted to resolving the phone wiring conundrum – I tried combination after combination until the phone worked. It took hours and hours of effort and after much stress and frustration, I finally succeeded.
I remember the success, the fist-pumping, joyous, result orientated hollering and full-on sense of achievement.
Mrs Baldwin remembers the expletives on the long journey to that success! More than a decade later, her occasional advice when I am contemplating something I am not exactly qualified for – “remember the red phone”.
When I got home after making the purchase of the new red phone, I announced its arrival with the line “remember the red phone…
“…well check out this baby.”
The good news, it works perfectly and has the right connection to plug it straight in. It looks cool, sounds great and is a lot more practical to use because of the push buttons; the star and hashtag make navigating automated menus doable where the old twist dial fails.
Back to the BBC article that prompted this post; whilst I don’t feel any need/desire to watch a black and white television or replace my laptop with a typewriter, I still love a telephone that has an old-fashioned bell ring.
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