Zenith Space Phone Demonstrator.

[kx250rider]

I'm surprised that they used the dial phone... You'd think that they would have used a touch-tone phone for that promotion! I've had a number of Zenith Sys III sets with the Space Phone, and worked on 100s of them. However, I cannot recall EVEN ONE ever being plugged in or in use. It was a gimmick.

Charles

[Celt]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

I'm surprised that they used the dial phone... You'd think that they would have used a touch-tone phone for that promotion! I've had a number of Zenith Sys III sets with the Space Phone, and worked on 100s of them. However, I cannot recall EVEN ONE ever being plugged in or in use. It was a gimmick.

Charles

Whether it was rotary or touch-tone may have depended on location. Many areas didn't get touch-tone service until the late 70's.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by Celt

Whether it was rotary or touch-tone may have depended on location. Many areas didn't get touch-tone service until the late 70's.

That's why I was surprised... The Space Phone was supposed to be cutting edge in 1979, so the dial phone seems backward. Nice item though!

Charles

[Celt]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

That's why I was surprised... The Space Phone was supposed to be cutting edge in 1979, so the dial phone seems backward. Nice item though! Charles

They should have made one for the really rural areas with rotary tuning and a hand-crank phone.

[ha1156w]

On the note of touch-tone service -- There are parts of the country that had it but it was a $5.00 extra cost option. My mother didn't bother to go touch-tone with any of her phones until 1996, and then only because my stepdad got a digital pager for work and she couldn't key in his PIN number! Her sole reason was not paying that extra $5.00/mo fee. Seems kind of silly given that the phone company has to maintain expensive equipment to handle the rotary stuff when digital switching became the norm in the 80's. Even today I still have an extra $1.00/mo charge for touch-tone from AT&T in an urban area. It's still considered an "option". WTF???

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by ha1156w

On the note of touch-tone service -- There are parts of the country that had it but it was a $5.00 extra cost option.

About 1979, I got a Touch-Tone wall phone at a flea market outside Chicago for about $5, and once my friend got its internal wiring corrected, it would dial calls just fine even though we were not paying the $2.50 per month or whatever Touch-tone fee. This free access also worked at my next two apartments in Chicago. In 1984, I moved to California, and I found out that they actually blocked tone phones from working unless you paid the fee, darn it!
So, of course I had to add it and start paying the fee, but within a couple of years or so the fee was eliminated anyway.

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by Celt

They should have made one for the really rural areas with rotary tuning and a hand-crank phone.

"Whirrr-Whirrr-Whirrr:............ Hello Central? Get me GRanite 4828 please!"


Where I grew up in West Los Angeles, I first saw a touch tone phone in 1972 in the house my mother bought. However, she didn't want it, so the GTE installed a plain old dial desk phone when we moved in (summer '72). At some point in the late 70s, touch tone service was standard with no extra fee although we still had the old black dial desk phone. I got our first touch tone phone and installed it myself so the phone company wouldn't know about it... That was about 1980. Back then, you could not own a phone. They were all leased from, and owned by, the phone company. You had to pay more for each phone monthly.

Charles

[matt_s78mn]

Has anyone here who has one of these TVs in their collection used the space phone on a regular basis? If so, relate some of your experiences?