Make A Rotary Phone Dial??

Question

I have a Rotary Phone from the (60's-80's). I adapted it so that it would accept calls and it has full voice (mine and theirs). My problem is that it was used an extention phone so that you just talk and no dialing was used. So I cant dial any numbers just talk if someone is already on the line or calls me. When I opened her up, I noticed the wires from tthe dialer were disconnected. SO all I need is to know where they need to be plugged in or atleast a clue to what it might look like. Ex: the green cord goes in slot A. Any clues would be appreciated, Thanks!

http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/networks/Dsc02558.jpg Thats a pic of a board similar to the one in the phone...so where on the board do all the dialing wires need to be plugged into???????

Answer 1

Been a long time since I dug into one of those but I can give you the basic principle and maybe you can get it working. First, I would suggest that before you change any wiring around that you make a diagram of the current wiring so you can at least get it back the way it was.

Rotary "pulse" dialing works by briefly interrupting the telephone circuit. If you examing the rotary dial, you will find that there are a couple sets of switch contacts (likely enclosed in a cover). These would appear to be long thin metal strips that touch each other. There will be at least two pairs of these contacts. With the dial in the normal resting position, you will find one set of contacts touching (called normally closed) and another set where the contacts are not touching (normally open).

Any time that the dial is not in the resting position, the normally open contacts will be closed. The wires from these contacts will be connected to the wires from the earpiece (most likely two white wires). The function of these contacts is to short out the earpiece while you are dialing so that you dont have a really loud clicking sound in your ear. You dont need this to make it work but it does save your hearing!

The normally closed contacts are operated by a cam and will briefly open and close again as the dial is rotating (by itself) back to the resting position. If you turn the dial to "4" and release it, this set of contacts will open and close 4 times, that it how it signals to the phone company what number you are dialing. Dial a 0 and it sends 10 pulses. The wires from the normally closed contacts need to interrupt the connection between the phone and the line coming into the phone. You need to located the wires coming from the wall into the phone, they will go to a terminal block or network and are normally a red and a green wire, ignore black and yellow. Remove one of the wires (either the red or green, doesnt matter) from the terminal block and connect one of the wires from the normally closed contact to the terminal block in its place. Then, connect end of the red or green wire that you removed from the terminal block to the other wire from the normally closed contact. When the dial is at the resting position, it will restore the connection and the phone will work. Turn the dial and release, it should pulse the line and you should be able to call someone.

Answer 2

You might want to look around on the following site to see if a phone like yours is shown. They have quite a few wiring diagrams that you can download that perhaps may show how the dial is wired.

http://www.porticus.org/bell/telephones.html

This can be more complicated than it looks, so I wish you luck!

Response to Additional Details:

Download one of the schematic diagrams such as http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/503b_md_schematic.gif

In this diagram, it looks as if the dial has four wires: two blue wires which connect to the "F" and "RR" terminals, and two white wires which connect to the "GN" and "R" terminals.

It also looks like a jumper wire (Green?) that should now be connected to the "RR" terminal needs to be moved to the "F" terminal.

You need to find the schematic diagram that most closely matches your phone; the one I just described is only an example. Also, if you are not familiar with reading schematic diagrams, you may want to find someone locally who knows how to do this to help you.

Answer 3

once upon a time there were device called pocket dialers. a pocket dialer is a small box with a key pad. when you place the dialer over the mouth piece of your roary dial phone and press the buttons you now have the equivalent of a touch tone phone. you can probaly buy one on ebay.