Remember the day?
Good old rotary dial telephones that just about every Australian home had at least one of (no mobiles back then) and often they were the centre of social life, especially for the kids. Most often in the hallway sitting on its own little "telephone table" with a great big thick telephone directory sitting next to it!
Stick your finger in the dial, wind her back and let go ... the sweet whirring sound of the dial returning and hopefully, you are eventually connected to the called party....sometimes you may "get lucky" as cross-talk was a problem at times, where you would have other uninvited people drop into your conversation or you into theirs - Ah, the wonders of "modern" analog switching telephony.
I used to gather together all sorts of telephone subscriber and exchange related equipment and components from NZ (my younger days) and Australia because I worked in the industry during my early career in electronics. Slowly I have found new owners for some of the "special" complete equipment (Railway communications equipment, Manual phones, bakelite manual and rotary dial telephones, massive group and final selectors from SXS exchanges and now these more humble bits and pieces from subscriber instrument, the Australian 802 telephone.
This handset component is from an 802 telephone.
TELECOM/PMG - 802 Series Rotary Dial Telephone Spare Part
Handset Carbon Granule Transmitter Capsule
Marked only as a 4583
All metal construction
57.75mm topside diameter with a much small barrel (contains the granules) 20.25mm diameter, the terminal end of which has two male spade connectors fitted, spaced 20.5mm apart.
Depth of the complete capsule is 23mm (excluding the terminals)
Capsule weight: 33g
Designed to fit into the STC TA0-1 (153660) plastic "buckets" which I also have advertised on our website.
I have made some resistance tests, only to check that at very least the granules are not "clumped" together which would create a rather unresponsive capsule. All good on this score, "at rest" resistance sits around 600 Ohm and if the front is hit with sound waves (or even a good shake!) the resistance changes dramatically - this is normal. I have not tested the capsule "in-situ" due to a lack of an instrument to test it with but I am confident all is well with this capsule.
A common problem with this type of capsule was the "frying egg syndrome" which means the telephone makes sounds which sound just like someone frying eggs, I cannot check for this unless it is being used in real life but all should be fine.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
USED
CLEAN (completely sterilised with ISO alcohol)
NO physical damage to the capsule at all
Yes, there is some light discolouration to the top plate of the capsule, where the holes are. This was created after years of the subscriber spraying into the microphone while talking - not much I can do about that but at least it appears to be working fine in any case. Actually the capsule is hidden inside the transmitter cover in any case, so no-one is going to see this discolouration.
I have now safely packed this capsule within a sealed clear plastic packet, ready to bring life back to another 802 somewhere out there!
