We were recently fortunate enough to help close the Prince Edward Island Telephone Museum. Dave Hunter had run the museum as long as his health allowed, and when he passed he hoped the collection would be distributed to telephone collectors, and not to the many antique dealers that spot PEI. This piece was retrieved from his collection. It was quite dirty so I gave it a nice cleaning.
After a thorough cleaning it looked marginally better. I spent a lot of time working slowly through the curly cord so I wouldn’t stretch it out.
The keys on the front of the phone are not representative of a typical configuration. Most phones would be configured with the red button being a hold key and each of the clear buttons would be a specific line. This set would allow for up to five lines. To make this happen the cable on the back of the phone had to be quite thick. Since telephone wiring was already done in multiples of 25 at the Central Office it made sense to use a 25 pair cable.
The cable was super dirty, and it took quite a while to get it back to normal. I removed the cable tie and replaced it with Velcro before I put this on the shelf.
The grey colour looks pretty good, but when I removed the number plate the difference was really noticeable.
The faceplate just lifts right off, allowing for easy installation and modification any time the telephone system was changed.
I catalogued this item as T-063. It’s a nice piece, and I’m glad I was able to add it to the collection.
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