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Candlestick phones and how they were used

Candlestick phones were the first type of phones to reach ordinary homes, shops, offices and suchlike, although only the more affluent homes made the somewhat up-market decision to go 'on the phone' in the late 1920s or early 1930s. This page describes and illustrates various candlestick phones: the earliest ones with no dial and later ones with dials. The page goes on to show the Post Office instructions for making and receiving a call - much of which seems strange to us today. Direct dialling was decades away.

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Extracted from the memoirs of the webmaster's mother (1906-2002) and edited by the webmaster with further research

The appearance of candlestick telephones

Candlestick telephones got their name by being tall and narrow, just like a candle in a candlestick. At the time when these phones came onto the market, candles for lighting were still in daily use in many homes.

Candlestick phones were in two parts with the mouthpiece at the top, reminiscent of the position of the flame of a candle.

The earpiece rested on a cradle when the phone was not in use and was lifted to the ear when in use.

1920s candlestick phone with no dial

How to make a call with a candlestick phone

The earliest candlestick phones such as the one in my husband's family had no dial, just a disk stating the number of the phone and other information on making the call. Lifting the earpiece from its cradle attracted the attention of the operator at the local telephone exchange - at least that was the idea. If she didn't answer - which was not uncommon if she was on another line or chatting, the caller would jiggle the cradle up and down repeatedly.

Later candlestick phones had a dial in the base as shown below, just with numbers.

Candlestick phone with a dial, the manual equivalent of today's keypad

Then local calls could be dialled directly using just the number one wanted. It was usually a small number like 3 or 11, but longer distance calls still had to be made through the operator, as described on another page.

By 1934, some candlestick phone dials with letters as well as numbers, but by then most people were going over to the newer phones, all of which had dials of numbers and letters. The instructions for using these dial phones to make a call is described for later models, but the procedure is the same.

Post Office instructions for making and receiving a call

The Post Office thought it necessary to instruct callers on speaking clearly to the operator when using early phones. Instructions were as shown in the following leaflet which is transcribed further down the page. In the transcription, 'subscriber' is what we might call 'caller', and 'telephonist' is what we would call the 'operator'. (Try to ignore the sexist language which was completely normal at the time.)

1921 poster of instructions on making and receiving phone calls: poor quality original but transcriptions are in the following boxes.

Try as I may, I cannot say 4 the way the Post Office advised.

It is interesting to see how much norms have changed over the years.

Disadvantages of candlestick phones

As people today are brought up on mobile phones, it is worth pointing out that candlestick phones were not portable. They had to be wired in place.

The following disadvantages owe much to Neil Cryer and Yin Zi who both used candlestick phones as a norm when they were younger. Yin Zi still has his.

1. Candlestick phones were awkward to use. Two hands were needed: one to hold the earpiece to the ear and the other to steady the main candlestick part to keep the mouthpiece to the mouth. This meant that one part of the phone had to be put down in order to write down messages.

2. Candlestick phones were heavy. Yin Zi points out that he finds it impossible to hold the main unit of his phone for more than a couple of minutes. The base weighs 2.3kg and the earpiece 400g. He assumes that the ones they use in dramas like Downton Abbey and Sherlock Holmes must be made of plastic.

One way round the problem was to mount the phone on the wall, but it was not straightforward to position so that the speaker height was right for everyone.

A wall-mounted candlestick phone

The newer phones of the 1940s were far more convenient in that both the mouthpiece and the earpiece were in the same unit and held in one hand, so freeing the other for dialling and taking down messages.

3. All candlestick phones needed external bell sets. These were large and bulky at the time.

4. The microphones and earpieces had poor sound quality.

5. Finally telephoning through the operator could be slow and often laborious as he or she could be working away from the the smaller switchboards, housed, for example, in the backs of shops.

If you can add anything to this page or provide a photo, I would be pleased if you would contact me.

Text and images are copyright

Photographs by the webmaster with acknowledgments to Milton Keynes Telephone Museum

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