All telephones are available to buy by mail order
£15 post and packing to all parts of the UK.
Smaller parts post and packing from £3 to UK only
You can collect from my shop by arrangement
Please contact me for shipping rates to the rest of the
world.
All telephones are available to buy by mail order
£15 post and packing to all parts of the UK.
Smaller parts post and packing from £3 to UK only
You can collect from my shop by arrangement
Please contact me for shipping rates to the rest of the
world.
·Bakelite
(Pronounced bakerlight) is the trade name for the first commercially
successful, thermo set plastic. It was patented on the 14th of June 1907 in
Ghent in Belgium by Leo Baekeland and named after him. It is a polymer of
phenol and formaldehyde with a filler, usually of sawdust. It was used in
the manufacture of many telephone cases and internal parts. Baekeland then
emigrated to America to develop his invention there. By an extraordinary
co-incidence, James Swinburne, a Scottish engineer, applied for a similar
patent the following day. Baekeland and Swinburne swiftly buried their
differences, opening factories in The USA and England. Swinburne's Damard
Lacquer Company was eventually renamed Bakelite Ltd in 1927 with Swinburne
as its chairman. It seems a strange twist of fate, that the future of
Bakelite, a substance fundamental to many telephones, should be decided by
patent applications placed one day apart. It echoes the original patent
applications for the telephone placed by Bell and Gray on the same day*.
·
·Ebonite
is a vulcanised hard rubber compound predating Bakelite. It was used as an
insulator or an insulating covering for early telephone parts. It is most
commonly seen as the covering on Bell receivers. It is naturally deep black
in colour and can be polished to a high standard. The surface readily
degrades on contact with air, and possibly the action of light, to a brown
semi-matt finish.
*This sentence has
simplified the Bell and Gray patent application procedures.
an old Bakelite
telephone 