1968 Deep Blue Northern Electric Contempra Field Trial #1096

When the Contempra Phone was introduced in early 1969, it was be the result of many hours of effort on the part of various design and manufacturing groups. The relatively short interval from conception to introduction would have been accomplished by teamwork and an awareness of the over-all needs of the project of all those involved.

In order to provide 1000 early production sets for field trial purposes, Northern Electric set-up temporary tooling that was designed and built while the high production tooling was still in the development stage.

This 1968 Northern Electric Field Trial #1096 is one of those early production sets with no patent dates. The base components are dated 1968. This Contempra Phone has no date codes or other marking embedded on the handset plastics inside.
A Northern Electric logo with a registered date of 1967 is embossed on the body face compared to the Contempra logo that was placed on the later versions. Moulded on the inside of the body there is a tiny date of 1967.
The metal base has the copyrighted Contempra logo vs the Northern Electric logo that is moulded on the later bases.
The ringer volume control is notched, the later production Contempra Phone have a lever type.