Page 211 - Demo

209The humble home landline was once the bedrock of electronic communication in our homes, and it%u2019s remarkable that something so essential is now deemed a museum item. Explaining the concept of recalling phone numbers, dealing with engaged signals and answering a call with absolutely no idea who was on the other end makes young people put down their mobile phones in disbelief.In the 1970s, the main phone in our house was a standard-issue Telecom rotary-dial telephone in a sun-faded cream colour. A green unit sat on Mum%u2019s bedside table and was replaced in the 1980s by a digital clock radio with an inbuilt push-button phone. In the American movies we watched as kids, characters roamed around the house with long cords that we could only dream of, and the idea of owning a cordless phone with an antenna you could pull up was purely fanciful.We%u2019d answer the phone in the polite manner of the day %u2013 %u201897872387, Tim speaking%u2019 %u2013 and take %u2018private%u2019 calls in Mum and Dad%u2019s bedroom, always ensuring the other phone had been hung up before important conversations were had so no-one could listen in.By the late 1980s, the push-button version of%u00a0the old rotary dial phone had been superseded by the Telecom Touchfone series, and in my inner-city Melbourne share house, it was our literal%u00a0lifeline.Designed in North Fitzroy by Melbourne studio David Aitken Design, the sleek design was a more scaled-down unit than those old ringers. The basic version, the Touchfone 200, was produced at the staggering rate of one million units in 1990 and came in just one colour: white.O%u00a0icially, they were available for rent or purchase, but we seemed to %u2018inherit%u2019 ours from somewhere, and it took pride of place next to our much-loved answering machine.Newfangled functions like redial, recall and call waiting came into play, and the Touchfone Executive really separated itself from the pack by adding a display screen that showed the date and time. In a great leap forward, it also had caller ID, which was incredibly handy if you remembered everyone%u2019s number, which we usually did.The Executive also added buttons you could pre-set with favourite numbers. You then wrote the corresponding names on a piece of card, which was placed under an adjacent panel. Suddenly, Nan%u2019s number was on speed dial, and everyone was happy %u2013 especially Nan.There are no surprises here: the rise of mobile phones kickstarted the slow death of landlines, and the switchover to NBN did the rest. Although many NBN accounts have an option for plugging a landline into your modem, most Australians don%u2019t see the need %u2013 unless you%u2019re a bit oldfashioned, like yours truly.The David Aitken Touchfone is an unsung hero of our telephonic history, a handsome, lightweight unit touched by literally millions of Australians. Sure, the cord used to get tangled, but dealing with that was far easier than trying to tell a kid that we used to phone people and if they weren%u2019t home, we had to just wait and call back later.YEAR 1985DESIGNERS David Aitken and Alina Loscher (David Aitken Design)MANUFACTURER TelecomIt took pride of place next to our much-loved answering machine.