Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GARY ROBERTSON RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: RICHMOND (AP) LENGTH: Medium
These dinosaurs - poking along in the slow lane of America's burgeoning information highway - are rotary telephones.
And in Clark's mind, not a finer instrument was ever made.
``They were built to last a lifetime,'' he says firmly.
Nearly 11 percent of American households still have a rotary telephone as their primary telephone, according to Yankee Group, a Boston communications research firm.
Paul T. Miller Jr., spokesman for Bell Atlantic, said about 20 percent of the phones in its Virginia system have rotary service only. But the number is shrinking all the time.
Clark, 48, became infatuated with rotary telephones when he was 15 and a neighbor gave him one for helping clean out a garage. He has been collecting and rebuilding phones ever since.
Despite the limitations of rotary telephones - most telecommunications systems recognize only the electronic beeps of Touch-Tones - they still have a following.
Through word of mouth, a growing number of them find their way to the doorstep of Clark's home workshop in Henrico County.
``I guess I'll work on 10 or 15 a month,'' he says. ``They're always coming in.''
Clark probably would do more, but he's on disability leave from CSX Transportation Inc. after having three heart attacks, and he's not pushing himself.
For those who have rotary phones, expert technicians like Clark are a godsend. Fewer repair shops will work on rotaries, and society in general doesn't have much patience with rotary dialers in an age of beepers and voice mail.
``A lot of older people like to hold onto the rotaries ... because they can hear the bells,'' Clark says.
He notes that the new Touch-Tone phones don't have real bells. They beep and chirp with the aid of electronic ringers and tweeters.
He shakes his head in disgust.
Clark also doesn't think much of the construction of the new telephones. Most of them, he said, are lightweight plastic that have to be weighted just to rest on a table.
Rotaries were made out of heavy metal until World War II, then many of them were encased in bakelite, a durable plastic.
``Look at this,'' he said. ``They sealed these works in naval jelly. You could drop one of the phones in a bucket of water and it'd still work.''
The durability of rotary phones is what has kept them around. Some of them have lasted through a couple of generations.
``They're real antiques,'' Clark says, ``and they still work.''
Joy Brown, manager of the 4,000-customer Amelia (County) Telephone Corp., says many of her older customers ``prefer not to change. They're satisfied with what they've got.''
When someone disconnects, she says, the company does not replace rotary service. But she says the company will work with customers when their rotary phones break down.
A spokeswoman for an AT&T telephone center in Richmond said some people still want a rotary phone as their primary phone, and the company has them. If a rotary has problems, she said, AT&T can send it off to a repair service.
Much of the baby-boomer generation grew up on rotary phones - Touch-Tone service became available in the mid-'60s - and now some of them are buying the rotaries out of a sense of nostalgia.
They are also popular with the parents of boomers. Rotaries became widespread in the mid-1930s, when crank telephones and local operators began to disappear.
``There are a lot of them on the market,'' says Clark, who noted that a used rotary can go for as little as $10 at a flea market. But rare ones can fetch a price of hundreds of dollars or more.
As he peers into the future, Clark predicts that in another 20 years standard telephones might not even exist, except as curiosity pieces.
``It'll all be cellular,'' he says, ``because it'll be cheaper - no wires or poles to replace."
``One day we'll all be walking around with a device the size of a pack of cigarettes. It'll be your telephone, your computer and your fax all in one.''
Clark hates to see it come.
``We're already talking mostly to machines,'' he says. ``My wife says it's been dehumanizing.''
He taps the bells of an old rotary just to hear them ring.
``Sometimes, I feel like a dinosaur,'' Clark says.
by CNB