Britain went into the 1960s still in the black and white age, and came out in colour. That applied not just to TV, but to films, clothes, cars, furnishings and telephones. The 'hip' decade saw telephones come of age as a mass-market consumer device.
It also witnessed communications from the GPO, which reflected some of the youthful optimism of the decade.
Telephones have entered a new era as fashion accessories since the widespread availability of mobile phone covers, ring tones and displays, but the trend started way back when colours were first introduced to the home devices.
Telephone design was liberated by the invention of Bakelite and the subsequent plastics revolution, which let telephone casings be produced in different colours, but until the sixties customers had not had a choice of telephone design. The decade not only brought in a new range of colours but also a new type of telephone - the Trimphone - the telephone was more expensive to rent than the standard ones but over 10% of people were using them by the 1970s.
As people started to take new technology into their homes, they often suffered a headache about where to put it, for several reasons: the new gadgets were thought to threaten family values; plastic was a new material that looked shiny, bright and vulgar; and somehow the mechanical objects just got in the way, so these new objects were viewed with suspicion.
During the 1950s and 1960s there was a passion in suburban homes for covering things up: lavatory seats and toilet paper were put under frilly covers, TVs were built into wooden cupboards, record players were in wooden cabinets and it was only a matter of time before the telephone got the same treatment.
The Post Office however wasn't impressed. They didn't like anyone 'tampering' with their equipment. Although the cover was harmless, home-visiting telephone repairmen would sometimes suggest that a cover had caused a fault with a telephone and refuse to repair it before it was removed.
Unbelievably, this transparent version of the Trimphone wasn't available for people to use in their homes. It was actually a display model that was taken around the country during exhibitions or else placed in the foyer of telephone sales offices.
The Trimphone marked a departure for the Post Office. The telephone was stylish, novel and innovative and it was optional. Up until then, generally the best the Post Office had offered was a choice of colour, and either a table or wall style. With the Trimphone, designed and produced by one of the GPO's suppliers (STC Ltd.), customers could choose to have something a little different from the standard model of the time.
It had a volume controllable warbler tone, rather than a bell, came with a coiled extension cable to let a user wander around the room holding it, and a glow-in-the-dark dial. These features gave it its name - Tone Ringing Illuminated Model - TRIM Phone.
Loudspeaking telephone (1960s) : the start of the conference callBy the 1960s, speakerphone technology had become quite sophisticated and this model, designed to look good on an executive's desk, was available.
The model used the body of a standard telephone but added a separate box that housed most of the dial and mouthpiece components. The main telephone was filled with the speaker, although the handset on the top worked perfectly well and could be used instead of the loudspeaker.
The microphone sat behind a grill above the dial. It had to be kept in a separate unit from the speaker, because although the technology was getting better, it still wasn't good enough to prevent feedback if the speaker strayed too close to the microphone.
Katherine Pell is a 30-year-old Museum assistant from Bournemouth and like most people of her age grew up with the phone as being an everyday part of life.
She is a great admirer of traditional phone designs and appreciates the artistic integrity behind them and explains her mourning of the old, and lack of attraction for the new, styles.
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Visit our interactive demonstration and try it for yourself. A new window will open.Malcolm Wright, born in 1953 grew up in the outskirts of London before moving to Cornwall aged 14. He settled in Weymouth where he became a coastguard and teacher.
As both his and his wife's families lived far away from them, a phone was essential and he remembers the state-of-the-art Trimphone they first had and the sense of 'cool' that went with it.
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