Jase sent us a good question: I was hoping someone in the AT community might help. My house has a series of speakers in each room and an old control unit in the kitchen. Nothing works and the speakers that aren't painted down to the wall have all been disconnected from their speaker wires. I'm curious if anyone knows the history of these systems...
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C&H just made the metal plates for the covers, not the components.
view Bork Bork Bork's profile
I tried Googling too and found a C&H Industries, out of Illinois... maybe it's the same people?
http://www.chindinc.com
view insanity_pepper's profile
I think it's an intercom system, of the "Billy! Dinner's ready!" variety.
view Mlle Kate's profile
That's not a music system - that's a 50's-vintage intercom system.
C&H probably did make it themselves, but out of generally available parts.
view bepsf's profile
My grandparents had one of these installed in their 10 bedroom house in 1969. They built it to be a group home and in addition to being able to call all the kids to dinner or check their whereabouts, it also had an am/fm to keep my grandma company in the kitchen. Pretty cool. Brings back memories.
view summerland's profile
We had one of those in our house built in the 70s. Intercom system with radio. It wasn't that big a house, so it wasn't very useful. You could "answer" the door from the kitchen, but since the front door was less then 10 feet away, it was mostly used to bust on siblings who forgot their keys. Also fun to play ghost with, calling out people's names from empty rooms.
Don't really think there would be much salvageable in the system now. You could maybe rig a new system behind the old one and either wire it up to the old console or use a remote control if you are attracted to its retro look.
view feathers's profile
I wonder if it was also supposed to be so you could listen out for a baby in another room?
view Elizabeth II's profile
No, because to speak (and in order to produce any sound in the system) you would have to press a button (on the system I know at least) ...sleeping baby can't do that...
view Marie-Eve's profile
with certain intercoms, you don't need to push a button to speak.
My mom is a second grade teacher and they have an ancient intercom in their school, and I am pretty sure it still works. There is a main base station in the office, and each room has a speaker that looks like these right above the chalk board. So in the office, they click the room number they want and say what they need, they can then click another button, and the teacher can just talk at the intercom, and it comes back through in the office.
I was thinking about it recently and was amazed at it. The fact that you didn't need to do anything on the one side, the fact that is sounded really good on both ends, even if you were in the back of the classroom, they could hear you talk back.
Very cool setup, but probably hard to expand at they added the new library etc.
view jmorey's profile
I grew up in a late-70's ranch and we had one of these intercom systems in our house. Apparently it was a hot feature back then, although by the time we moved in the intercom part wasn't functional. Some of the units had built-in radios which still worked, though.
view UdonNoodles's profile
i had a similar one in my 1955 ranch when i moved in. it was even hooked up to a speaker in the doorbell so you could play music outside or talk to whoever was at the door. kinda pointless in a 1100 sq. ft. house. anyway, it stopped working a year or two after we bought the house. both my husband and my dad tried numerous times to fix it, but the interior was all tubes which are obsolete these days. my husband really wanted to get it fixed because it is SO 1950's, but it probably would have cost much more than i would be willing to pay for it. and it is only an AM radio...so when it did work all we could get was talk radio. we finally just took it out along with all the speakers and sheetrocked over all the holes. the next owner of my house will probably be really confused over that huge doorbell unit.
view monthcalledmae's profile
Sylvania 5-tube Radio/Intercom distributed by C&H. They were typically 3 zone in my experience (several in the neighborhood) possibly upstairs, downstairs and whole house; or front door, back door and house. Intercom broadcast to all speakers in a zone when the button was pressed down, then user could listen by pressing button up. Radio also could be pushed out to any one of the zones. Just pulled one from a 1950's ranch and posted it on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330352788944&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123 .
You're right, it is difficult to find any good information on these. Information provided here is from experience. I too would welcome any additional info.
view brmilton's profile