![]() ![]() The US company Automatic Electric had made a Bakelite telephone as early as 1925 where everything but the metal cradle was made in plastic. For technical reasons, black was the only possible colour, or perhaps some related drab nuances. It is also comfortable to hold, does not draw moisture and is easy to keep clean, a contributing factor to its early use for both telephone receivers and toilet seats. The material is homogenous, evenly coloured and hard, with a lovely lustre. Basically they could be moulded into any shape possible, even the soft streamline shapes preferred. In many ways Bakelite was the perfect material for telephones at the time. That is about how long it took for the hot moulding compound to cure and then, when the Bakelite press spit the casing out, it was ready to assemble over all components on the bottom metal plate. It has been suggested that the time needed to make the casing was reduced from one week to around seven minutes. The management chose the new soft material Bakelite and the skilful designer Johan Christian Bjerknes was picked to solve the problem together with artist Jean Heiberg.įor the telephone manufacturers the move from plate to Bakelite was a total revolution. Ericsson badly needed a completely new telephone for automatic switching to hook up to the company’s successful, 500-switch system and to replace the old sheet metal telephones and their built-on finger dial. ![]() But Ericsson had bought that company in 1928 and asked AB Alpha in Sundbyberg in Sweden, another subsidiary, to make and distribute the Bakelite phone. Actually it was a Swedish-Norwegian collaboration since it was both developed and designed in Oslo by the historic manufacturer Elektrisk Bureau A/S. When Ericsson’s Bakelite telephone was first distributed world-wide in the 1930s it was called the Swedish type of telephone and set the standard for how a modern plastic telephone should look. ![]()
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