MTFCA Forum

Inspired by Rich Eagle's illustration I decide that I needed to update my mobile phone in the T to a more compact version.

I love it!

Where did you find room to pull back the brake lever? And where do you put your left leg now?

Tight but it works. I actually don't drive with the phone that way, I set it up once I get to a show wait to see what people say.

Doesn't that limit the distance you can travel from home? Unless you have a very long extension line.

I guess you can get a bag phone and carry it with you!! Remember those? You could put it in a burlap sack and call it antique!

I tell the younger crowd it is an early
car phone and the watch the reaction. Hmm, bag phone would really throw people for a loop.

I like it! I had a similar thought about 25 years ago....

Mark,

Unlike Colorado, Tennessee is a hand-free state and my 1907 Western Electric Wall Phone is too large to transport. Do you have any period correct suggestions?

Thanks for sharing,

Dom

LMAO!

Non-electric cars can be fitted with an Acme Auto Carrier Pigeon Coop, which includes acommodation for two birds, a non-leak writing pen with India ink, special lightweight stationery, and an automatic, spill-proof water and birdseed dispenser. (Birds not included, obtain locally) Delivered complete with tags and weather-proof message capsules. $3.00 / $3.50 west of the Rockies. AVOID ACCIDENTS! Please do not text message while driving!*

The late Gary Schiebe of Plymouth, MN had an antique wall telephone hanging on the side of his 1925 TT.

He set it up so he could make it ring on demand via a remote control. Whenever someone started looking at the phone, he would ring it. It was pretty funny seeing people's reactions, especially when Gary wasn't standing near the truck.

That’s funny you could add a typewriter to the passenger side in case you need to write a text message!

Call Junior Samples at BR549. He might have gotten a few more T’s in.

I still have my bag phone!
I have a wall mounted rotary dial phone on the shop wall. a fellow had his daughter with him 1 day that came by to pick up a lawnmower and he showed her the phone and she honestly had no idea what it was or how it worked. He showed her and she was like "WOW" that is really cool technology!

That is a wonderful adaptation Mark. The phone magneto could be used for ignition in a pinch.
Rich

Dom Denio wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 10, 2022 9:21 am

Mark,

Unlike Colorado, Tennessee is a hand-free state and my 1907 Western Electric Wall Phone is too large to transport. Do you have any period correct suggestions?

Thanks for sharing,

Dom

I replaced my large Kellogg with the one shown in the photograph, made things easier for sure.

OK, I've been lurking here forever and still don't have a Model T yet (whoever heard of a liberal-arts student with money or a covered parking space) but I do have a lot of weird old-time technology from the 1800s and 1900s, so here y'all go--

If I was going to hook up an antique phone in a Model T--I would do it like this. You'd need a 1930s-1940s phone to do it; an old "common-battery" or "central-battery" phone (not local-battery) hooked up to an Xlink gateway paired to a cell phone via Bluetooth. The Xlinks are expensive; I got mine secondhand. Best I can say is it's a heck of a lot cheaper than paying the monthly phone bill for copper-line service.
What would be awesome in a Model T or a vintage camper/travel trailer/house truck is to get an old push-to-talk railroad phone or a "dispatch phone" and add a small touch-tone dial pad held under the passenger side of the dashboard by magnets, wired to the subset--this would allow for a manual/non-dial phone to function for outgoing calls.

The Xlink device needs some six or nine volts of direct current if I remember right--this could be pulled from modern batteries hidden inside a couple replica dry-cells, like "Burgess" or "Columbia" types.
Still wouldn't suggest using a rotary phone while driving, and I'm not real sure how the spark coils on a T would interfere with the signal (do they? or do they only mess up radio reception?) but it would be awesome to show off in a car show--or for Model T drivers to let their navigators/riding mechanics communicate on a tour or an endurance race. And you wouldn't even have to alter/damage the phone with modifications.

But yeah, here's my new cell phone from 1937. If I connected the Bluetooth circuitry to a battery pack I could carry this thing out and--with a working cellphone paired up to it--place a rotary phone call from the middle of anywhere with a 4G cell signal. This phone had its wires cut & was taken out of service in the 1950s or so; I got up this morning & used it for some business calls. Rings and receives fine, dials out no problem. I did have to put a little clock oil in the dial & such, but I had that around anyway for oiling up some antique clocks. I've still got to do some cosmetic work on this phone as it's pretty gnarly-looking, but like a ton of surviving phones it works nicely as-is.

To run this phone in the house I put the phone on the sideboard, the subset box behind the Edison cylinder phonograph, and then the Bluetooth stuff in an empty Leich ringer-box subset, the old wooden kind which I found missing its magneto & coil/condenser stuff, which I hid on the floor behind the sideboard. I'll be making some alterations (Splitters, extra phone jacks for more antique phones, hidden power supply, better finish, AM radio transmitter for streaming to antique radios) but anyway that's the rough-and-ready setup to run an old phone. If I had a Model T I'd try it out in there with the engine running.



Some other old landline phones sitting temporarily on a 1928 crank phonograph. (The dial stick is a replica.) Notice the large metal "subset" next to the 202. You could probably hide all this stuff in a small metal box (like a military ammo can or an old-time lunch pail) if you bought a miniature single-gong ringer, modern Cortelco network, and rigged all that up in there with the Bluetooth stuff--this way if you only found the actual desk-stand part of a phone, you could still make a working phone & have the mechanical ringer sound.) The bakelite desk phones, candlesticks, etc. seem awfully delicate though to be out & around in an open car. What would be fun, is to put an old "space-saver" phone in one of these Model T's--It would be able to hang off the dash with a small clamp or heavy magnet. I don't have a "space saver." Also, these phones were common in auto garages & parts stores, so there is an automotive connection.

The wooden Leich crank phone at back doesn't run on modern lines yet; it's a "local battery" phone pulled out of a garage in the '50s when the town went to dial service. Still functional, but I haven't figured out how to properly hook it up & get it to ring.

I don't think a rotary dial phone's dialing function would be affected by Model T RF. Whatever you used to link the roatary dial to modern lines or Bluetooth, etc, might be. It might get into the audio, but shielded cable ought to prevent that.

TXGOAT2 wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 12, 2022 2:42 pm

I don't think a rotary dial phone's dialing function would be affected by Model T RF. Whatever you used to link the roatary dial to modern lines or Bluetooth, etc, might be. It might get into the audio, but shielded cable ought to prevent that.

The link is just standard 4-conductor copper wire phone cord; that might not be a problem at all. You can usually get long pieces of landline cord in thrift stores for a dollar or two which would be ideal for this kind of stuff--course they do make period-correct cloth phone cords still but a telephone in a Model T is pretty far from period-correct.

You guys are funny, who knew. By the way I have the large Kellogg if anyone is looking for one.