W49

The W49 telephone (Ti-Wa W49) was designed and built by the Hanseatic Apparatbau-Gesellschaft Neufeldt & Kuhnke (Hagenuk) in Kiel, Germany for the German Post Office and in the western occupation areas only. The peculiarity of this device is that it can be used as a desktop phone as well as a wall device. To achieve this simply reposition the rotary dial housing and fork by 180 °. It did not have the expected commercial success like the W48. Since it was made of Bakelite many specimens were broken or damaged. Thus the Deutsche Post avoided its commercial sale in large numbers. Made in black and ivory and more rarely in gray and red. The handle and the shell of the rotary dial were made of melamine resin and not of Bakelite. In Greece it was not acquired by OTE. We find it limited to private homes that have purchased it from a trip to Germany.