Alexander Graham Bell was a Scot, and had he developed the telephone and made the first long distance call from the UK, we could have laid claim to it being a British invention. But it was not to be. The idea was in his head and didn’t come to anything until he reached Ontario Canada.
Anyway, the telephone in question is the 712/722 Trimphone. When these were announced in 1964, everybody wanted one, but unlike today’s phones, a man from the GPO had to come and install it, so the wait could be a long one. The wait was worth it because the 712 was the hippest thing on the planet.
This is the info card for the 722. Note the exciting colour range. These phones were very light and easy to carry, and they had as standard the world’s longest cable.For the first time, you could sit further away than six feet from the wall, but it’s weight worked against it too. Dialling the phone resulted in it sliding around and being small, there was not a lot to hold. It was the first phone that didn’t ring too. It warbled, but we still used the phrase ‘I’ll ring you’.
The other issue was the luminous dial. Seen originally as a good idea, when users found out that it was radioactive, albeit very mildly radioactive, that was enough for people to take a step back.
Eventually, the Trimphone turned to tone dialling and then user pluggable (8766/8786) in the late 70’s and early 80’s which overcame the radioactive element and having to wait forever to get a new style phone.
The Trimphone was a GPO telephone. Towards the end of its life, there was an influx of novelty phones, none of them authorised, and all resisted by the GPO as being incompatible with the existing lines.
British Telecom took over from the GPO, promising to make the British telephone system the best in the world, and with that promise came a whole range of BT approved novelty phones, some with advanced features for the time.
Alas, the swinging Trimphone was replaced as the standard telephone, but for a few years blazed the first designer phone trail.
If you want to see what followed it, see here..
