Vintage Model 500 Telephones

The model 500 was the Bell System's mainstay telephone from the 1950s through the 1980s. When it was designed in 1949 by Henry Dreyfuss, whose firm also conceived the WE 302, rotary-dial technology was state of the art. But the phone was in the marketplace for so long that it evolved its internal electronics, if not its external appearance, to incorporate 10 touch-tone keys beginning in 1964 (“star” and “pound” keys would come later). One...Continue Reading