atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Other TDM Phone Systems Antique Telephones 3554 wall phone

Which manufacturer was responsible for the 3554 wall phone?

Was this strictly the product of the 554 plus a touch tone retrofit kit or was this also supplied as a complete unit?

Did Western Electric ever manufacture these?

ITT and Stromberg/Carlson made them. If my memory serves me correctly, Northern Telecom made them as well. I don't believe that WE ever made them, however I've seen plenty of refurbs that used the WE chassis and external handset connections that would normally have landed upon terminals S and T on the network.

Field modifications of existing 554 sets were accomplished by a dial adapter plate, dial screw spacers and the dial itself, but I don't remember these being sold as a kit.

Thanks Ed.

I have avoided getting one of these for my collection because I am a WE purist...but I've broken my own rules before.

Western Electric did make these sets,at least for trials of touch tone wall sets. I have a 1961 annual report from AT&T. There is a picture of many of the telephone sets being produced at the time ,and also shows some trial sets. Two early versions of the Trimline, a miniwall set like the later 1554 but with a rotary dial,and a 554 set with the round touch tone adapter.
Strange coincidence that this should come up. Sunday's New York Times has a front page obituary for John E. Karlin. He was considered the father of Human Factors Engineering and worked for Bell Labs from 1945 to 1977. He was responsible for the design of the touch tone dial that placed the 1-2-3 at the top of the dial instead of at the bottom like on calculators . The obit has a picture of a 500 desk set with the round touch tone dial adapter. Some other things he worked on were determining that people could remember a string of seven digits ,thus allowing the elimination of exchange names for all number calling. When the #7 dial was designed with the numbers and letters on the outer ring, it was found that dialing was slower than with the older #5 dial. It was Karlin that determined that with the figures on the outside of the hole,there was no reference point as to which hole to insert a finger . He came up with idea of placing a white dot in the hole. To conserve copper,he was asked to determine if the handset cord could be shortened. He went into his department's offices every three nights, and put in cords that were one inch shorter. Nobody noticed until the cord had been shortened by a foot.

How much would the government have spent to do that study?