Desk telephone W 46

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Desk phone W 46 from SABA

The desk telephone W 46 (dial telephone 46) was the first desk telephone to be completely redesigned in 1946 in the western occupation zones of Germany after the Second World War . Apart from the transmitter and the handset , no part was taken over from its predecessors W 28 and W 38 . It also got a new housing shape. The manufacturer was the Schwarzwälder Apparate-Bau-Anstalt August Schwer Söhne ( SABA , known primarily for the manufacture of radio sets) in Villingen . The W 46 received approval from Deutsche Post in 1947 (which was renamed Deutsche Bundespost after 1950 ).

The W 46 is a very solid construction, its angular, narrow shape looks rather simple and functional, less elegant in contrast to the W 38. The high-gloss black lacquered housing cap is made of deep-drawn sheet steel , the rigid fork, operated only by a pin, is made of die-cast zinc , the telephone receiver from the W 28 made of the thermoset material Bakelite . The lettering "SABA" is embossed in raised letters on the back of the housing. The number switch is also a new design and is not compatible with number switch 38 (NS 38). Its enamel number ring has black numbers on a white background, the finger-hole disc ("dial") is made of black Bakelite. Their holes are a little smaller than on the NS 38. There were also specimens with a so-called “finger recess” disc. This thermoplastic dial, newly developed by SABA, has small, hemispherical recesses instead of the usual holes (see photo). A principle that did not prevail because women with long fingernails in particular had dialing problems and, for example, had to use the end of a pencil to help.

The SABA fingertip disc

All electrical and mechanical components are attached to the stable metal base plate and freely wired with bound cable harnesses . The alarm clock is a so-called "double-shell alarm clock" with two different sounding metal bell shells mounted one inside the other. The W 46 is available with and without an earth button .

SABA received a contingent from and for the French occupation zone for the production of the W 46 and therefore only built this apparatus in small numbers. That is also the reason why the W 46 is nowadays quite unknown, even among collectors, and therefore rare. Also, because of its low level of awareness, many sources incorrectly state the W 48 (a further development of the Reichspost - W 38 ) as the first West German post-war telephone. From 1950, SABA and other telephone construction companies only built the W 48, which had established itself as the standard telephone of the Deutsche Bundespost for many years and was produced in very large numbers. In the mid-1950s, SABA ceased phone production.

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