<P> Many retro - style versions of the candlestick telephone were made long after the original phones were obsolete by companies such as Radio Shack and the Crosley Radio company . </P> <P> When Western Electric had sufficiently developed modern handset design in the 1920s, the Western Electric candlesticks were superseded by a series of new desktop models, starting with the A1 mount in the mid 1920s . This was essentially a candlestick telephone that had its vertical tube - shaft shortened to about 1 ⁄ inches (4 cm) in height above the round base, and had a cradle on top of it, designed to hold a combined handset with both the receiver and the transmitter in the same unit . The cradle contained a plunger that operated the hookswitch in the base below . The A1 was only distributed for a very short time until the B - type telephone mount (model 102 telephone) was completed in 1927, a streamlined design that replaced the tube - shaft with a sculpted cone shape . By 1930 this round base was redesigned into the oval - footprint D - mounting to avoid instability of the unit when dialing . At the same time the electric circuitry was upgraded to produce the model 202 telephone, which reduced the strong sidetone characteristic of earlier designs . </P> <P> The Hush - A-Phone was like a mini megaphone created in 1920 for slipping over the candlestick phone . </P> <P> The Ericofon, or Cobra Phone is a plastic one - piece telephone, in the candlestick / upright style, created by the Ericsson Company and marketed throughout the second half of the 20th century . It was the first commercially marketed telephone design to incorporate the dial and headset into a single unit . Because of its styling, and influence on future telephone design, the Ericofon is considered one of the most significant industrial designs of the 20th century and is in the collection of Museum of Modern Art . </P>

What did telephones look like in the 1920s