Repost: Do you say ''receiver'' or ''handset''?

Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

My last poll was kinda morbid, so let's try another:
With regards to the part of the tephone you pick up when it rings, do you call it a ''receiver'' or a ''handset''?

Secondly, what do you think the preferred term is for professional telephone people?

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

its a handset.
i have a western electric 102 b1 deskset.
the part you pick up is called a handset.
btw it has a seperate ringer box too.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

Neither.
I pick up the phone. I hold the phone next to my ear. I talk into the phone. I hang up the phone.
When the phone rings in the Lab, I answer it, and talk. If it is not for me I say "Yo Bro! Pick up the phone!"
Yea, maybe its technically wrong, but thats the way I have always heard it.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

Are we assuming that it's a corded telephone?

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

I'm responsible for a PBX and I call it a handset. The preferred technical term is also "handset."

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

my 89 year old grandpa calls a cordless phone a walk around phone

reciever would not cut it for me

tranciever would be more accurate.

handset is kool with me.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

its a handset but I call it the phone.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

Handsets transmit and receive; how about transceiver?

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

Phone. That's it.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

The term receiver was entirely correct on the earlier phones. The microphone was attached to the phone on the wall, and you spoke into it. The receiver was held against the ear. When the microphone and receiver became an integrated unit, the part you picked up and placed against your ear was still called the receiver, even though the mouthpiece was part of the unit. Receiver has been the descriptive term of the component part you hold for many years. The part you didn't hold was the base or console. The term handset has been associated with radio when it consists of a separate console and handheld mike/speaker arrangement. Today's phones, even though they're wireless, are still phones, and usually it's all self contained to the point that referring to the entire unit as 'phone' instead of receiver or handset is only reasonable.

I don't see any reason to borrow radio's terminology in order to remove a time honored term. Receiver has been the term for decades. Why change it now?

Receiver was what you held against your ear. Receiver was what you placed back onto the hook, which hung up the phone and terminated the connection. The fact that the mouthpiece was eventually integrated into the receiver didn't initiate a change of the term in public reference to the part. Technically, it may have been referred to as a mouthpiece/earpiece component, there was no push to adopt radio's terminology by calling it a handset. There hasn't been any new development that would made it necessary.

My guess is that involvement in telephone manufacturing by non-domestic sources has led to the loss of some domestic terminology, due to being unfamiliar with the development of our terminology. I'd prefer to use our terminology, than let Asia alter it to fit their view of what we should be calling it.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

I also program and maintain PBXs, and whenever I have to order a replacement handset, it's called, well, a handset.

Empath is right though - in the days of fixed microphones and handheld receivers, where you were only holding the speaker to your head, it was called a receiver.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

Now that cell phones have PDAs, color screens, MP3 players, cameras, flashlights, TVs, FM radios, speakers, antennas, alphanumeric keyboards, games, styli, GPS satellite receivers, vibrators and whatnot built-in, perhaps they should be called media centers or entertainment systems. Even **** Tracy would be impressed.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

We Aussies call it the phone, or if you want to get really technical, the telephone /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/naughty.gif

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

i call it the televsion

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

When I was a small kid in the early 1970s, it was always the receiver, or more commonly just the "phone." And you leased it from Bell Telephone. And if you were on a budget, you had only one in the house and it had a rotary dial and it was always found mounted on the kitchen wall.

Now you buy them from Walmart and they come from Asia with documentation referring to the "handset," so I have picked up on that term and use it if I don't just use the more common term "phone."

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

[ QUOTE ]
Lurker said:
When I was a small kid in the early 1970s, it was always the receiver, or more commonly just the "phone." And you leased it from Bell Telephone. And if you were on a budget, you had only one in the house and it had a rotary dial and it was always found mounted on the kitchen wall.


[/ QUOTE ]

Yup. In the early 1980s, when I was in elementary school, I remember having a wall-mounted rotary phone in the kitchen. Also, the earliest cordless phones were quite large and also unreliable by today's standards.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

Back when I was a kid, there was a phone booth at the store.


When we got one at home it was a big deal, and there was only one and it was in the kitchen. I'm pretty sure it was black.

When I worked at the phone company, a handset was used to plug into various circuits, but was not a phone all by itself. It had a set of plugs on the end of teh cord so we could use it where-ever we needed it. There was a distinction between a reciever and a mouthpiece. A handset had both, as did a headset.

Now-a-days, I'm as likely to say handset as anything else. That's despite the fact that we have cordless phones, many of which don't have their own base.

Daniel

P.S. When I lived with my grandparents the phone line was shared with 6 other families. Our ring was ring ring rinnnnnnnnnnng.

Daniel

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'

It's the phone.

Theepdinker

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'



When I visited my grandmother's place around 1951 or so when I was about 4 or 5, she had a phone that looked like this. It was in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. You had to turn the crank in a special manner, probably short and long rings. I'm sure there was a human operator somewhere in town. I think the phone dates from the 1930s or thereabouts.

Re: Repost: Do you say \'\'receiver\'\' or \'\'handset\'\'?

This is an interesting poll.

Up until the days of cordless and mobile phones I called it the handset. Got in the habit when using PRC-25 and PRC-41 radios in the Marines back in the day. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Britt