Adrian Baldwin
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Observations
  • Reviews
  • Blog
  • The Blog Library
  • My 70s Things
  • Contact Me
  • Links

Vintage technology adoption

6/6/2015

0 Comments

 
PictureNew 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.

Blog Home
Blog Library
Home

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Adrian Baldwin

    Blogging for more than a decade

    Archives

    December 2022
    July 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    May 2021
    October 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    March 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.