I moved into a house built in the 1950s in the north eastern US and this outlet is on the back of the house but I can’t find anything like it searching online. If anyone knows what it is I’d greatly appreciate the enlightenment!
Type 505A telephone jack. You can see one in this wiki under History.
OH, that’s the name and not the current rating! Pick up there phone, it’s fucking Zeus!
It’s a Bell 548A jack to be more precise. It’s compatible with both 283B (the older square shape) and 505A (the later round shape) plugs
Thank you, I’ve never seen older than the 6P4C, I love learning little tid bits of history like this!
Sure. Honestly I’ve never seen one in person. 4 wires is the norm for telephones and I figured it was too small to be high voltage so I guessed comms then researched it. Ended up being right luckily 😅
Wonder if it actually still works
Thats good question, I might have to go antiquing to find something to try it out with… although i suppose I’d have to pay to activate the line so maybe not.
And yeah I ruled out power right away since theres no poka-yoke feature to prevent mixing up hot, neutral, and ground, but “four prong outlet” and reverse image searching weren’t getting me there.
They made adaptors from what you’ve got to rj11.
I wonder if the house has a pool. I imagine someone wanted a phone on the patio table by the pool. That seems iconically 50s to me.
I have a relative with a phone by his pool
He uses an old rotary phone for it, because it’s all pretty basic electromechanical stuff that can’t really get messed up from it being out in the rain or whatever. It can’t make outgoing calls because modern phone systems don’t work with rotary phones, but it receives incoming calls just fine
It should maybe be noted that he’s an old school telephone lineman who really knows his stuff, so I don’t know if there were any other adapters or anything needed to make his setup work.
No pool now but Im doing some digging and found some abandoned conduit and tons of what I think are old diy decorations so I’d say the evidence is strong there probably was.
That was what we used for phone jacks before the current standard. It takes a square plug with 4 matching posts. We had one growing up.
This.
The jack type is the original Bell System jack. Used to have these in the house I grew up in. We had to buy the Bell 4-pin to RJ-11 adapter for the more “modern” phone.
Cool weather cover, guess they wanted to go outside with their old phone, plug in, make a call and sit outside chatting.
Kids. They just can’t pull the curly cord 100’ from the kitchen, down the hall, and to their room anymore.
Probably for plugging something in <3
It’s either that or something else
Yes, I remember when I was a kid and my family built their house, it was a big deal that we were the first we knew with the new style phone jacks instead of those
Pre-60s phone jack
Oh, this is just one of them; there should be two other keyholes. When the three medallions of the Founding Patriots are reconfigured into their true form as Keys of Genesis and inserted in these keyholes, they unlock the way to the Path of Radiance, at the end of which is a power capable of turning back the Antichrist.
Although, it’s hard to tell from the photo; if it’s brass, not copper, then it’s just an old furnishing anchor.
Frustration.
