# Ancient Web: A Ham Operator's Western Electric Phones Filled a Photo Catalog A QSL.net collector's page catalogues Western Electric Touch-Tone telephones, decorator sets, payphones, autodialers, military sets, and their appearances in film. 2026-09-30 :: Switchboard Tech Services ![Ancient Web: A Ham Operator's Western Electric Phones Filled a Photo Catalog](https://switchboardtechservices.com/static/images/defaults/articles.webp) Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). Before the smartphone made every telephone look like a rectangle, an American desk phone could resemble a wooden chest, a miniature roll-top desk or even an elaborate basket. One amateur-radio operator's website makes room for all of them. [Visit the Western Electric Touch-Tone phone collection](https://www.qsl.net/wd0giv/PHONEPAGE.html). The owner introduces the page as a collection of **Western Electric** telephones from the push-button era. It starts with photographs of ordinary sets and oddities: a ten-button model **without the \* and # keys**, a standard 2500 desk phone, a compact Space Saver, several colorful Princess phones and a Trimline with much of its circuitry inside the handset. A photo caption also identifies a telephone made for the **1980 Olympics**. There are no long product reviews on the front page. It is a collector's index, using images and a few candid notes to encourage visitors to explore. ## The hardware beneath the decorator case The deeper [Design Line catalog](https://www.qsl.net/wd0giv/Designline.html) is particularly revealing. It describes Bell System decorator telephones from around the era of the breakup of AT&T. According to the collector, customers could buy the decorative casing while the telephone company retained ownership of the working electronics. The models include a roll-top desk phone, a Stowaway, a wood-box Trimline, a wicker basket design and a commemorative model for the 1976 Bicentennial. Not every object is confidently named; the owner openly marks an unidentified green set and another object with “I have no idea.” Links from the main page lead to **commercial telephones, autodialers, payphones, military Autovon-style sets, keypads, technical notes**, and telephones used in movies or on television. That range records the many roles of a device often reduced in memory to a black rotary dial. The site has the modest structure of a collector's home page on [QSL.net](http://QSL.net), with galleries, email contact and an old WebRing link. No trustworthy launch year was established during this review, so the date of the telephones should not be confused with a date for the website. This is material-culture preservation: the design differences and unlikely shapes of ordinary communication hardware catalogued by somebody who cared enough to photograph them. [Browse the unusual Western Electric Design Line models](https://www.qsl.net/wd0giv/Designline.html). Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). - Categories: [Ancient Web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/categories/ancient-web/) - Tags: [#Telephone History](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/telephone-history/), [#ancientweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/ancientweb/), [#collecting](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/collecting/), [#personal-web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/personal-web/) [Articles RSS](https://switchboardtechservices.com/feeds/articles.xml "Subscribe using an RSS reader") --- Canonical URL: https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-a-ham-operators-western-electric-phones-filled-a-photo-catalog/ Language: en-us Content type: article Author: Switchboard Tech Services Published: 2026-09-30T21:28:54+00:00 Modified: 2026-10-18T21:00:17.130390+00:00