YOUR NEW PHONE (Jan, 1959)
YOUR NEW PHONE
TELEPHONE subscribers will soon be getting a new, small-size phone like the one shown at left. The set will be offered in several colors and, later, in two models. The first model will feature a combined night-light and dial-light. The second model will have a two-line pick-up with a hold button for the first line and provision for use with home-intercommunication and speakerphone systems. Quantity production of the novel telephones is expected to begin in 1960. •
Not shown: the Rottweiler hiding behind it.
This is, of course, the telephone model that would eventually become known as the Princess Phone.
It’s Lovely!
It’s Little!
It Lights!
The only phone I ever saw as a keychain charm.
Those dial Princess phones were nearly impossible to use – they were so light that when you tried to rotate the dial, the phone rotated with it.
We had a Princess at home when I was little (1970s), leased from Bell Canada. My mom found it very valuable, maybe because Bell had warned us that the Princess wasn’t offered anymore, and that they couldn’t replace it if it ever broke.
The lighted dial was a big thing, I guess. I had lots of fun turning the night light on and off.
Did the original Princess have a full size dial with a gap? I recall later ones with the “Contempera” style (with no gap by the “1 hole”.) The finger stop rotated about 30 degrees, so the dialing motion was fairly normal.
Our Princess had a fixed stop with a gap.
I think they used a mobile stop on the Contempra to make the dial smaller, so it would fit in the handset itself. I have a rotary Contempra (burnt orange, no less) in a box in the basement: the handset weighs over a pound.
http://www.telephonesuk…