I decided it was time to rewire my 1930 Western Electric Model 202 phone and get it working on our current FiOS phone service. 1930 incidentally was the same year that my grandfather started working for New York Telephone where his first job was ripping out Western Electric Pay phones from establishments that hadn't paid their phone bills. I didn't have a phone line in my home office where I wanted to use this antique, but many years ago I had pulled 6 sets of CAT 5E network wiring from my office to my media closet (through a crawl space with little more than 16" clearance in one spot), but I hand't run additional wires to the telco lines on the far end of the house. It was back into the crawl space to pull new twisted pair copper wires -- this time all the way outside to the telco box. Getting the "Telco Only" side of the phone box open was a snap and the wires were connected in short order. The phone now had dial tone, but I was shocked when I tried dialing with the rotary dial and discovered that FiOS still supports the rotary (pulse) dialing. This phone is working great after 82 years -- they really don't make them like they used to! |
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