sundance-communications.com Forums More-Phone & VoIP Systems 1A2 and Comkey Telephones & Systems is anything special about this phone?

Just curious:
https://cgi.ebay.com/ITT-MULTI-LINE...tZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item20af9b8394

Not really

What Bill said. It's a standard 20 button 1A2 set. It needed all 50 pairs to provide 1A2 functionality on 19 lines. It used 3 pairs for the first line, 2.5 pairs for the next 18 and 1 pair for the ringer =49, leaving exactly 1 pair spare for the Intercom buzzer.

The phones worked very well and required very little maintenance. Every once in a while you would have to change a lamp or a coil cord and every once in a long while a dial.

The 20 button model had the same footprint as the 10 button unit and phones could be upgraded from 10 to 20 by adding another keystrip and cable and changing the faceplate - something that we did more often then you might think.

I probably installed hundreds of them in my relatively short career as a 1A2 installer.

Sam

Other than the flash button...it's a typical 20 Btn phone. But then even the flash button with the wood grain faceplate, that still doesn't set it apart.

Now if it was a 13 line with built-in-speakerphone......

Well, the phone is hideously ugly. That makes is special, doesn't it?

Phones of that model are/were common as dirt. There is/was even a 30 button model.

Wasn't this phone known as the ITT Call Director informally or formally?

Not formerly. Call Director was a trademark of AT&T. They were very protective of all of them except Touch Tone, which they intentionally released into the public domain.

The ITT boxes simply said "10/20 Multi-line Telephone"

Stromberg/Carlson's excuse for their Call Director was referred to as "Image One" if I recall correctly. It had the same appearance as AT&T's (WECO) 630/2630 series.

S/C's "Image Two" became their offering of the traditional WECO 830/2830 design that ITT adopted.

I don't recall any versions of the "Call Director" design made by anyone other than WE or S/C. Had it not been for the Federal Government requirement for competitive bids on purchasing contracts, I think that WE would have been the only manufacturer using this design.

Then we can also mention the strike issues with AT&T back in the 70's that accelerated the need for alternate manufacturing sources, but that is another subject for another day.