I've never been professionally involved with telecommunications. My interest in telephones started when my parents payed a surcharge to rent a fairly early push-button telephone (an 8756). This was the bees knees and was the cutting edge of technology as far as I was concerned. In fact this was still a loop disconnect dialing (or pulse dialing) phone.

I did not start collecting telephones until I left home and went to Preston Polytechnic. Preston market was a great place to pick up telephone bargains in those days (mid eighties), although I didn't have the money to acquire too many items. I also had the problem of not knowing what to do with them - they looked very nice as ornaments but I wanted to be able to use them!

About 1990 I discovered the Telecom Heritage Group and discovered how some old phones could be converted to work on modern systems. When I met Helen and we decided to buy a house we thought it would be nice to put an old phone in each room and have them all working. It became obvious that some sort of private branch exchange would be the best solution. At this point I decided to specialise in British telephones or ones which had been used in the UK. I also decided to limit my collection to telephones which could be made to work on modern systems. This is a big limiting factor and rules out all the early telephones - but what use is a phone if it doesn't work?

I have now got a working system (see System Information page). I really enjoy being able to use the old phones. It is so much more satisfying holding a Tele 164 handset than one of today's throw-away phones. I'm still collecting, but have run out of rooms in the house to put new acquisitions in. So anything new has to either replace something else or go in the loft. I am also interested in the old- fashioned Strowger electro-mechanical telephone systems, and have got an ATE 25 line 2-motion PAX and an STC 30 line Uniselector PAX in the loft. I'm also interested in anything telephone related and also old Motorola mobile phones. You can email me by clicking this link - it is cloaked and encrypted to prevent harvesting by spammers.