While watching TV Land, I realized I could learn about the
> phone-wealth of various TV families.
Just last night TV Land showed the first episode of "The Jeffersons" (a spinoff of All in the Family.) I noticed the kitchen had a rotary desk phone while the living room had a Touch Tone phone. When Touch Tone came out, in our area it was a flat $1.50 monthly fee regardless of how many extensions you had, and all extensions were converted to TT. [I miss Isabel Sanford, what a wonderful actress. She gave so much warmth to those shows.]
BTW, the Bunker home in All in the Family had a 302 set, which was the older 'art deco' set that came out in 1938. By 1970 they were relatively rare; I think they stopped being installed in the early
1950s in favor of the modern 500 set.* I suspect such an older set was chosen to give the home an older/poorer look to it. Much later in the series they got a Touch Tone phone. People who had lived in their houses for a great many years without changing their phone service would have 302/354 sets. Many new houses were built in the late 1940s and of course all would get 300 type sets.
*Bell had a big inventory of 302 sets. They repackaged them in a modern case that looked somewhat like a 500 set and called it the
5302, but it was still a 302 set internally. They had kind of a squat look to them.