Friday, January 14, 2011

Western Electric Red Alert Phone


This is my Western Electric 502 phone, a former alert phone from a USAF installation. I had it re-wired for the standard modular phone jack, and it's tied into the house Vonage phone system. Unfortunately, the ringer will wake the dead, even at its quietest settings. When that happens, one of the dogs starts howling, and the other dog starts looking for me to make it stop.

So in the interest of domestic tranquility, I wrapped duct tape around the electromagnet's clapper. Now it just buzzes when an incoming call rings in. The little white AT&T box behind it and to the right? That's an inline touch tone dialer, with 4 programmable speed-dial buttons in front, and a full keypad hidden under the flip-top cover. It's pretty handy to have if you want to make outbound calls on a receive-only handset, otherwise I'd have to rely on my old Radio Shack pocket tone dialer pressed against the mouthpiece...

3 comments:

K said...

You could also tap the switchhook repeatedly to dial. 9 times quickly for 9, etc. Freaked my Mom out something fierce when I showed her that... ;-)

John B said...

my best friend likes to party.
a shady type activated his phone line. the phone didn't work. I used the hook switch to dial my cell. I got his number, and we played with it for a couple of hours. we'd have done more, but he was moving out!

I used the bits of his broken conaire phone to build a couple of other gadgets.

John B said...

my best friend likes to party.
a shady type activated his phone line. the phone didn't work. I used the hook switch to dial my cell. I got his number, and we played with it for a couple of hours. we'd have done more, but he was moving out!

I used the bits of his broken conaire phone to build a couple of other gadgets.