The Phone You Rented for 40 Years and Could Never Break

For decades, Americans didn’t own the heavy black telephone in their homes — they rented it from the phone company, month after month, sometimes for forty years. Stamped “Not For Sale” and built by Western Electric for the Bell System, these phones were nearly indestructible because the company had to repair them for free. But after the 1984 breakup of Ma Bell gave Americans the freedom to finally own their phones, it also ended the business reason to build phones that could last a lifetime.