Zenith Space Phone Demonstrator.

[Eric H]

Neat item!


http://cgi.ebay.com/Zenith-SPACE-PHO...QQcmdZViewItem

[Celt]

I remember hearing about those back then. Pretty cool!

[Carmine]

That seems kinda silly... Why didn't people just put their cell phones on the coffee table like I do?

[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.

[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?

[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

[jstout66]

I have 2 Space Phone sets. A 19" wooden tabletop and a 25" Console I use in my front "office". I just switched out sets in my bedroom, but that one was hooked up as well.
I do use the SpacePhone feature on the set in my office, but not often because it drives people nuts, and the people that call that DO know I have a Space Phone always say "Get off the damn Space Phone"
It's like using a speakerphone or more like Walkie Talkies. When one person is talking the other can't. It also dials out by Pulse, no touctone feature so perhaps that's why Zenith used a rotary.
Great idea for the time as cordless phones weren't common and no-one had cell phones like they do now.
Another wacky feature from Zenith. Kinda like "Zoom". Who the hell ever used THAT feature? LOL! I DO have a 19" System 3 with Zoom and it is a cool feature to show off tho.
Also, I worked with my Uncle in his Zenith store when SpacePhones came out and they didn't sell well because they were pricey. PLAIN, non remote consoles were around $725.00, and it was $100.00 more for remote, and I think another $50.00 for the top of the line with SpacePhone. That's almose $900.00 in 1981 dollars. Pretty Pricey.....

[Carmine]

"Get off the damn Space Phone"

I think I'll start insisting that people in my house say "pass the space command" instead of "remote".

[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???

[Celt]

Yepper. We were pulse only here until around 1980 and even then, having tone service cost extra bucks. Many opted to keep their old phones. Oddly enough, 18 miles down the road tone service had been available since the early 70's.

[Dave A]

Tone did not get to Chester Springs, PA (30 miles W of Phila) until 1987. I moved here in 1985 with tone phones and had to switch them back to pulse. I always remember calling my answering machine and thinking the ringer sounded like I was calling Wyoming in 1948. Kind of a low-pitched rumbling noise. I still keep an old WE rotary desk set for fun. The bell will wake the dead. Hey, it still works when the power is out. The CO has a genny. I had to show my 15 year old niece how to dial it.

And we were one of the first CO's to get FIOS two years ago.

Dave A

[bgadow]

It was sometime in the 80s that we got touchtone I guess. What I most remember is that, up until that time, you could dial anywhere else in town without dialing the full number, just the last 5 digits. The new equipment did away with that convenience which set a lot of people to grumbling.

We still have a rotary wall phone at work. In the early 90s I bought it from AT&T rather than paying the lease they charged each month. I can't think of any reason to replace it...it's out in the shop, the phone the guys have to use for personal calls. Keeps them from making unneccasary ones! Actually, we have a rotary at home as well-one of those frilly "French" phones made in the 70s. We always use the cordless, but that makes a good backup for outages and we can hear that bell really well. We chose that phone because my wife liked the style-before that I had a great black desk phone made by Stromberg-Carlson, with an amazing bell & a nice tone.

[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