NEW TELEPHONIC DEVICE KEEPS HANDS FREE (Jan, 1929)
NEW TELEPHONIC DEVICE KEEPS HANDS FREE
MR. GEORGE TANKARD is shown below with his new invention that is designed with an eye to speeding up the efficiency of a busy man. This invention is balanced on the shoulder by the form fitting holder. The receiver is placed in the holder and then adjusted to the shoulder so that the ear gets the best results. It is interesting to note that this device has been produced in London, where the American type of speed efficiency has been taking a very strong hold in the last few years.
Too busy to move his shoulder, apparently.
How about wearing a headset just like a switchboard operator would use?
When I was a kid our family had one of those “candlestick”- style phones depicted here. This picture doesn’t show it but there was a rotary dial on the base of the standing unit. In those days people had small “telephone tables” that held the phone. You sat on a chair next to the table with the receiver held to your ear and leaned over to speak into the transmitter unit on the table like you would when using a microphone. By the time I was a teenager Ma Bell replaced it with the more familiar “cradle” type phone which had both the receiver and transmitter on the hand held portion. You could then relax and sit back in your chair to talk. Takes me back
Rick
Some of those candlestick phones were mounted on an articulated scissors linkage to provide some level of adjustment. (This was mostly seen at businesses, such as at the telegrapher’s position at the railroad station.)
Rick….
Really?
What TV series had phones with dials in the base of the handset?
The Prisoner?
Kosher…
As seen in the Max Fleicher “Grampy” cartoons.
Sorry Jayessell, but I’m afraid I don’t understand your comment. ?????
Rick
Candlestick style telephones on the expanding scissor mount were a staple of the
cartoons of the era… Or am I thinking of silent movies?
Sorry I can’t find an example to link to.
Gah!!!
RICK…..
The one-piece telephone that had the dial on the wide end under the mouthpiece.
You turned it upside down to dial.
To hang up you set it down on the table.
I saw it in British an/or sci-fi movie, but the Googles, they do nothing!
Jayessell: Jay you just need to know how to talk to Google. Look here http://www.ericofon.com…
Now available in replica as the Scandiphone http://www.wildandwolf….
This is a list from Wikipedia of appearances in the media
The Ericofon has been featured in several feature films and TV shows (not The Prisoner though), mostly from the 1960s.
* In the movie “Two For The Road” (1967) shooting star architect Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) receives a long distance call at a housewarming party on an Ericofon.
* An Ericofon appears prominently in the “Twilight Zone” episode, “Third From The Sun,” first broadcast January 8, 1960.
* In the movie “The World of Henry Orient” (1964), Peter Sellers uses an Ericofon in his bedroom.
* An Ericofon is featured in the opening scene in “In Like Flint” (1967).
* The character of Myra Gale Brown (played by Winona Ryder) uses an Ericofon in a few scenes of Great Balls Of Fire! (1989).
* In the 1967 film “Casino Royale,” Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) receives a phone call from SMERSH on an Ericofon.
* The Ericofon appears briefly in the headquarters of the enemy in the first episode (Eleven Days to Zero) of the TV series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” (1964).
* The character of Teddy Forzman in the TV show “The Adventures Of Pete & Pete” uses an Ericofon in the third-season episode “The Trouble With Teddy.”
* The Ericofon was also featured in the 1997 movie “Men In Black”, where it was the deskphone for each workstation in the Headquarters.
* A character in the 1999 film “But I’m A Cheerleader” is seen using a green Ericofon.
* In “Live Bait”, the eighteenth episode of the third season of “Mission: Impossible”, the phone is shown many times as the desk phone of Helmut Kellermann (Anthony Zerbe), the episode’s main antagonist.
* In the 1969-1972 television series, “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” the Corbett household featured an Ericofon.
* A red Ericofon is used in a top-security U.S. tracking station in the episode “The Ninety-Second War: Part II (1972)” of the TV series “Hawaii Five-O”.
* A modified Ericofon appeared as a prop alien telephone in the first-season episode “I, E.T.” of the TV series “Farscape”.
Jayessell. OK. I got it now. In that case the one I meant was the kind we had in the 30s and early 40s. Ours looked like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/250…
Rick
FB38: TMI, but thanks!
Can you find a cartoon or silent movie with a candlestick phone
on extendable scissors?
I thought that was a meme or a trope.
Didn’t one almost kill/barely save Harold Lloyd? Chaplin?
http://www.worthpoint.c…