Rotary Dial Phone Schematic

As my research continues, I’ve came across this somewhat complicated schematic on the rotary dial telephone. Despite the illustration being simply line drawings, it is rather hard to understand what actually is going on. But I guess there is no harm including this to the list of research:

Rotary Dial Phone Schematic

( Image from The Free Information Society)

‘Evolution of the Dial Telephones’

An interesting site on the evolution of dial telephones invented in the 1920s to the arrival of the Touch Tone dialing.

Here’s the site: http://www.arctos.com/dial/

Few More (Field) Guides

Just for laughs:

The ultimate guide to fireworks.

If you ever decide to be a future contestant on Fear Factor or Survivor, here’s a guide to eating bugs.

Guide to becoming evil.

The art and mechanics of shooting rubber bands.

“One Nation, One Cheese” – Welcome to America!

More to come.

Bell System’s Rotary Phone Illustration

The following illustrations are from Bell System Memorial website:

Candlestick Rotary Phone

702BM Phones

Rotary Dial for the iPhone

iPhone Rotary Style Dial

“So, you’ve got a snazzy new iPhone. You like it alright, but wouldn’t it be better if Apple had just made dialing a number on the touchscreen really, really difficult?” - CrunchGear

This is a fun, little, yet not so practical, dial style for the iPhone.

Here is the link to the article.

Vintage (Rotary) Phone Ads. Index

Here.

The index contains quite a few interesting advertisements on rotary phones. Personal favourites are this one and that one. And perhaps that one as well

If you are interested with a little history on the telephone company ‘AT&T’ and its coming-abouts to its current stage, this link provides some insights of the timeline for the company:

http://www.corp.att.com/history/history1.html

It is quite an interesting little read on how the history starts off by Alexander Graham Bell to Bell System Telephones, and then to AT&T. And at one point the AT&T Bell Logo received a 93% recognition rate in the United States thanks to Saul Bass’ design.

1984 -AT&T Logo

‘How to Dial a Rotary Phone.’

“The local news of the week. At midnight Saturday, the telephones in this city will be changed to dial-service and all telephone numbers will be changed. Late this week, new directories will be delivered. Here are a few important suggestions for the use of your dial telephone...”

One of the many things that Google churned out when I typed ‘Rotary Telephone’ into the search bar. An instructional video on educating people how to use a rotary phone, just like what the title suggests. Informative.

On a sidenote, the little girl in this video seems really happy for some reason, wonder why…

One’s Junk, Another’s Treasure

Last weekend, thought I’ll try my luck with the local car-boot sale a visit, hoping to find some interesting object(s) for this brief. Surprising enough despite the local car-boot sale having quite a number of stores, the amount of objects that caught my eyes was either far too few or far too expensive, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t manage to get a few bargains along the way:

Vintage Telephone

Vintage Telephone

This vintage telephone caught my earlier interest simply because one of these things are hard to come-by nowadays, at least from where I come from. The state in which this piece was bought at was…quite acceptable. The telephone itself is mechanical in its nature and on top of that it has interface to interact with. Dial. This object I believe answers the brief. But what would be interesting is to perhaps pry the outer-shell apart and see what is inside. I am more inclined to lean towards using this telephone as ‘THE’ object for the brief.

Halina AI Vintage Camera

Halina AI Vintage Camera

This camera is actually my favorite find of the day. This is sort of an imitation to one of those Rolleflex/Rolleicord TLR cameras but regardless, the dual-metallic lenses actually makes the camera stand-out somewhat distinctively. The object is mechanical and the interaction with it would…slightly different than other cameras, but I’m just generalising at this point. It would be a little disappointing to pull this little guy apart but I guess I’ll leave it alone at this point.

‘Challenger’ Typewriter. This piece of ‘modern’ typewriter was actually my first buy for that day. This object is still fully functional keys, ink ribbons still intact, it has an ‘interface’; that alone speaks for itself.

More images of the objects here.

Tamiya Manual

Porsche Turbo - Manual PG1

Mechanical, electronic do it yourself (DIY) RC cars, not only were they challenging when it comes to assembling, plastic models like these was a part of me when I was smaller. Not only did it provide a sense of satisfaction when the whole thing was finished putting together, the whole process leading to the final outcome proved to be a huge challenge as well. Some of these boxes of DIY RC plastic model was at times quite costly and that it would be quite meaningless to just provide you the pieces without an instruction manual on how to assemble them. The process on following the instruction according to the sheet made it all the more interesting.

Porsche Turbo - Manual PG2

Porsche Turbo - Manual PG3

Porsche Turbo - Manual PG4

As I recall, the manual for the plastic model was like a small field guide of its own. The manual contains sections on ‘the overview of the model’, ’safety precautions’ – things you’re meant and not meant to do, ‘tools required and recommended for building the model’, and along with the few other necessary information.

In relation to the brief, manuals for plastic models is more or less a starting point for discovering an objects – the process in which it was being assembled. And that by starting from the basic and stripping off the essence of the object provides a better knowledge at the lowest level. With its in-depth explanation and step-to-step guide, a manual for assembling an object could prove to be an invaluable form of reference.

What is a ‘Field Guide’?

“A field guide is a book designed to help the reader identify wildlife (plants or animals) or other objects of natural occurrence (e.g. minerals). It is generally designed to be brought into the ‘field’ or local area where such objects exist to help distinguish between similar objects.

Field guides are often designed to help users distinguish animals and plants that may be similar in appearance but are not necessarily closely related. It will typically include a description of the objects covered, together with paintings or photographs and an index.“

- Courtesy of Wikipedia

For this brief, instead of identifying natural occurrences or wildlife, the field guide will instead be used/designed to help the users identify the chosen object in regard to its functionality and purpose.

Examples of Field Guides:

A Field Guide to Genetic Programming:
A somewhat complex and heavy introduction to the scientific fields of genetic programming, in a nutshell.

Field Guide to Firefox 3:
An interesting and somewhat in-depth field guide to the newly launched Firefox 3 Internet web browser, offering explanations and descriptions to its many new features.

Soil Characterization Field Guide:
Another science field guide, except this is from NASA on the subject of identifying the characterization of soil; along with a few basic illustration on the subject.