1950s The design of the telephone didn’t change much from the ’40s to the ’50s, but the mechanics of it sure did. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the numbers and letters are placed around the rotary so that people could view them more easily when dialing, and it also had an adjustable volume control. This style phone is the Western Electric model 500 Rotary. It was designed by Henry Dreyfus and was used as the Bell System’s mainstay telephone from the 1950s through the 1980s.
