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I purchased this 8 x 10 print at the swap meet. On the back is printed:
Mr. Cliff McCorkle, proprietor and pharmacist of the 101 Broadway Pharmacy, Richmond, Calif., preparing a prescription. 5 November 1957. Photographer: Pfc. Barbara A. Warner, Sixth US Army Photo Lab, Presidio of San Francisco, Calif. Official US Army photograph. View full size.
I have a wall phone like those, made by Automatic Electric, the General Telephone equivalent of Western Electric for AT&T. As far as I know, though, Richmond was always Pacific Telephone, an AT&T subsidiary, so why are those phones there? I was born and raised a few blocks from that pharmacy, and am a bit of a phone nut, with a collection of interesting, different phones - like those!
Looks like a temp emplyment office now
When I purchased my home in Vancouver, B.C. in 1977, the British Columbia Telephone Company installed this model 50 wall phone in my kitchen. It was originally a rental phone, and when deregulation arrived I purchased this as my home phone for $35.00. While it does not have a chrome dial, it does have the deluxe chrome rings on the heavy handset. This telephone has never needed service in all these years, and it is used a lot. Dial phones came late to Vancouver, and most homes changed from manual exchanges with operators to dial in the 1950s. Originally these phones were without a dial, and as exchanges were converted the "Telephone Man" came 'round to each home and installed a dial. My first phone was in an apartment in 1967, and no private lines were available, so I had a party line for ten years. Such was life with B.C. Tel, a subsidiary of General Telephone at that time.
I have a Zero fan that I still use. It rattles a bit, just a little, but it works well. I just have to remember to oil the bearings every summer.
by how pharmacists were able to get the medicine bottles into the typewriter to create the labels. Well kept secret at pharmacy school, no doubt.
I found one of those phones in an antique store and installed in our historic (1937) house in Phoenix Arizona about 5 years ago. It still worked although our grandchildren were clueless about how to use a rotary phone. You could club someone to death with the Bakelite handset. It weighed about 2 lbs.
It's a Zero made by Bersted Mfg. who made several cheapo brands to be sold at drug stores for a few dollars. The quality brands such as GE, Westinghouse and Robbins & Myers were sold in appliance stores.
That model, or the 1938 version of it, was used by Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman:
“One of the little known stories about Superman is that he owes a lot of his existence to this typewriter...I liked this typewriter so much that it was the only portable I ever had or used.” -- Jerry Siegel, 1995.
It was also used by Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming.
which, along with the ESKIMO brand, were mainstay coolers in the Fifties.
Clever names, no?
Not the jazzy "jukebox" variety with the optional chrome, but just as functional.
[That's about the phones, folks. -tterrace]
Note the fan awhirr -- must have been warm in Richmond that day.
My mother had this typewriter from her college days in the mid-fifties. It's rather nice.
The prescription that he is working on (Vanquin) is for pinworms and is supposedly no longer available in the USA. It seems that it caused gastrointestinal problems among other things.
You have to love the ingenuity of gluing a Victor mousetrap to the drawer and use the "snap" clip to hold what looks to be a hand towel.
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