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MAKING THE MODERN WORLD
Stories about the lives we've made

Object:Intercommunicating telephone with ten selector buttons, 1950


picture zoom related ingenious images © Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library

One of four Bakelite office telephones for inter-office communication, manufactured by ATM. When combined with a wood flour filler, phenol formaldehyde, known by its trade name 'Bakelite' after its inventor Leo Baekeland, forms a useful mouldable plastic, with very good electrical insulating properties. It was the first plastic to be used for making radios, and was ideal for the Art Deco-style designs of the 1920s and 1930s.

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