I'm finally giving this 1978 Northern Telecom Contempra some attention. I thought the recall button wasn't working properly, but it just turns out that unlike the Western Electric Trimline, the button doesn't cut off sound to the earpiece, and the Norstar ATA continues sounding dial tone for a couple of seconds after the line goes on-hook. If the phone rings while the handset is off-hook, but the recall button is held, you can hear the ring voltage and caller ID data.

I was expecting to see construction similar to the Trimline, but it's built like a traditional phone, with the network in the base and a full-size ringer, versus the Trimline's competitively tiny integrated ringer.

Contempras are cool and culturally significant phones. If this one was almost any other color, I would keep it, but for my tastes this beige was barely worth the $5 I paid for it, so I'll move it along. I'll shine it up and make a video of it before I do.

It is neat that it has both of the factory number cards, never changed out.