I moved into a house built in the 1950s in the north eastern US and this outlet is on the back of the house but I can't find anything like it searching online. If anyone knows what it is I'd greatly appreciate the enlightenment!

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[–] 290 points 3 days ago* (3 children)

Type 505A telephone jack. You can see one in this wiki under History.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_jack_and_plug

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  • [–] 164 points 3 days ago (4 children)

    OH, that's the name and not the current rating! Pick up there phone, it's fucking Zeus!

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  • [–] 27 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Back in my day, our phones were powered by the wrath of Zeus. We had to anger him BOTH WAYS to get some lightning to call and hang up.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    I ran across 18v AC of his wrath stripping one side of the phone wire with my teeth on a scheme to capture and store \ use ring voltage to power devices. Free electricity you know.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    I don't understand the reference. Can you please explain?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Zeus is the Greek good of thunder and lightning.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    lol! Gee, thanks. 😂

    No, I meant with the phones. What's the relation?

    Was that like some reference from an ad? A movie?

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  • [–] 11 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    The jokes about the phone connection and Zeus is that 505A can be read as 505 amps, an electrical measurement for current. 505 amps is quite a lot, especially in the context of being for a phone. 505 amps is about equivalent to 20 1200 watt microwaves running at the same time (120V).

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Now I'm imagining a mad scientist hooking some weird antenna up to a telephone while screaming something about jigawatts.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago (2 children)

    Was that ever a valid pronunciation of gigawatts, or did somebody admit that it was a misreading of the printed word?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago* (2 children)

    In my country we say jigawatts (and jigabytes, jif, and so on)

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Thank you, I've never seen older than the 6P4C, I love learning little tid bits of history like this!

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Sure. Honestly I've never seen one in person. 4 wires is the norm for telephones and I figured it was too small to be high voltage so I guessed comms then researched it. Ended up being right luckily 😅

    Wonder if it actually still works

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Thats good question, I might have to go antiquing to find something to try it out with.... although i suppose I'd have to pay to activate the line so maybe not.

    And yeah I ruled out power right away since theres no poka-yoke feature to prevent mixing up hot, neutral, and ground, but "four prong outlet" and reverse image searching weren't getting me there.

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