Rotary dial mobile

Rotary Cell. Photo Justine Haupt.

Justine Haupt, a cosmology instrumentation engineer at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, took the rotary dial of an old Western Electric Trimline telephone, connected it to an Adafruit Fona 3G, and stuffed the whole thing in a 3D-printed case to obtain the most unusual mobile phone you’ve ever seen. And it doesn’t just make and receive calls: Justine added a few useful features like a 10-level LED display of signal strength and battery level, programmable buttons to quickly call specific people, and a two-section curved e-paper screen to display information such as missed calls. The best part? It’s open source! On her site, Justine posts all the info you’ll need to build your own Rotary Cellphone. The only thing is, you’ll need large pockets or a handbag to carry it around.

⇨ Wired, Lauren Goode, “How a space engineer made her own rotary cell phone.”