What is the thing that resembles a camera shoe under the handset holder found on telephones with a handset used for?

tester1121@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 69 points –

I have noticed phones with a handset (like the one in the image) have a little cover that resembles something like a cold camera shoe under the bottom of the handset's top speaker holder. Is there a use for it? It has a line bump in the middle, but it doesn't go all the way from both sides, it leaves a gap. I have also seem some of them have extra space on the top of the cover, and some don't.

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If you’re talking about this thing, it serves two purposes. It is the hook that opens and closes the line (hangs up and picks up the phone), and it is used by this thing

to keep the handset from falling off the base when it’s mounted on a wall.

Or maybe you meant this thing. Yeah, it keeps the handset in when the base is mounted vertical. You can see that it’s slanted in the back.

That’s so it slides in and out on this other slanted lip on the handset instead of getting caught on it. You can take the handset off just by pulling it directly away from the wall.

Btw, on Trimline phones it is reversible for if you’re not hanging it on a wall. It looks like this when you pull it out.

Does that white semicircle on the bottom of your nails represent blood or platelet deficiency?

Where have you heard that? It's just what regular fingernails look like.

This is the tumblr foot artist with a weird foot gene that his entire family had too all over again

Does blurting or absurd insensitive claims make you an asshole or autistic?

If you dont have that white thing on your nails you should see a doctor, you are missing something vital from your diet.

If you don't recognize it I would suspect your entire family is lacking something it needs in its diet. All healthy people have it.

Exactly this. It’s called a “hook” and when the phone is “off the hook” that’s the thing it is off of. Being off the hook means the phone is powered up and connected to the local loop. When the phone is “on hook” that means it is disconnected from the loop and awaiting the pulsed ring signal.

Desk phones have a reversible hook so that it keeps the button depressed when the phone is in the cradle but doesn’t catch when you attempt to pick it up.

On modem signals in the old days, the + was equivalent to “flashing” the hook, or quickly disconnecting and reconnecting to the loop, and the AT command H1 told the modem to go “on hook” while H0 told it to go “off hook”.

Back before the DTMF network, when everyone used pulse modulated phones, the “pulses” were caused by going in and off hook in a specific pattern. You could actually make a phone call from a rotary payphone by flashing the hook in the pattern that mimicked the rotary dial pulsing the line as it rotated back to home position.

In the really old days, the hand crank served much the same purpose, but actually supplied electricity to the local loop; when the phone was on hook (which was a big metal thing the earpiece sat in) someone else turning the crank would make all the phones on the loop ring; you picked up if the ring matched the number of rings for your extension.

Yes! Another phone nerd!

One small clarification. There’s not really anything special to the pulses for pulse dialing. One pulse for the number 1, all the way to nine pulses for number 9, and then ten pulses for a number 0.

In the 80s there was a way to cheat phone booths in Germany: With a small tool that had an adjustment screw you could position the hook switch to an exact position where the phone booth had already connected the line but did not yet power up the rest of the machinery (including coin counters)

You could then call arbitrary nunbers by pulse dialing using the hook switch (the rotary dial was still powered down)

Basically a EU pulse dial version of phreaking.

My father, who died this year, used this a lot too make "free" calls in the 80s.

Me, deep in the night, reading about modem signals and off the hook. I love forum threads. They have taught me more than I can imagine.

So that's how you used the old hand crank phones, I never know. I thought you turned the crank to get power into the phone and then told the person working the switch bord who you want is to talk to. And that when you were telling you sometimes needed to re turn the crank to get more power.

Much better than the older design which cannot be mounted on the wall.

And the even older design that didn’t even have a bell integrated in the base. The bell was in a separate bell box.

Or one of these real old designs that didn’t even have a bell. It has a buzzer that’s barely audible (it might even just be the phone’s speaker, idk). Also, the microphone and the earpiece aren’t in a convenient handset.

This one is a replica made in probably the 1970s or 1980s. It’s funny, when it was made it was a replica of something vintage, but now it actually is vintage.

You have a very interesting phone collection and I appreciate you sharing! Unlocked memories I didn't even know I had! 😃

Huge props for the unexpected old phone exhibition. It was very interesting, thank you :3

Well, cannot be wall-mounted like the one in your picture but those phones did get wall-mounted in slightly different shape. 1000038469

Interesting. I’ve never seen a phone like that. Usually the wall mounted versions of the Model 500 had a hook for the handset in the front of the base to hang the handset vertically. This one looks like a different company than Western Electric though. I’m guessing it’s a UK company, because it’s 999 for emergencies (or at least it’s not US). You’ve got me curious enough I feel like I’m about to go down a rabbit hole.

Edit: yep, it’s a UK company called GPO. This is their model 741:

https://www.britishtelephones.com/t741.htm

https://gpospares.co.uk/gpo-spares-gpo-bt-741-wall-dial-telephone-two-tone-grey.html

What a cool design! I would love one for my collection.

We had a yellow one like that hanging on our kitchen wall in Ohio, so they were definitely around.

Oh, I was not aware you are into this as a collector, now I feel honored to be able to show you something new!

I live in Europe, not the UK though, so maybe that explains why these are familiar to me. Although another user said they saw one in Ohio.

Like and follow for more astonishing technologies from bygone eras!

(Do people really no longer have phones on their desks or what?)