AT&T Merlin BIS 22

Merlin Business telephone systems the classic of the 1980 for small business offices. Merlin Plus brought several new advances to business telephone systems way back in the 1980’s. Telephone system features such as Auto Attendant (even though you couldn’t leave a message was new in 1986 and the days of ten bucks an hour for someone to answer the phone would begin to become part of the past for small business in Los Angeles and all over the USA. Let me remind you again this is before the internet and the cell phone.

Merlin telephone systems were electro mechanical technology, and worked on eight conductor cable allowing for a separate Voice and data circuits along with allowing the telephone ringer on still another pair of cable.

There were four telephone terminals manufactured for the Merlin Plus telephone system. Two ten button telephone sets the HFAI telephone and the BIS 10 along with the BIS 22 pictured here and a 34 button console known as the BIS-34.

The Merlin Plus telephone system was designed for startup companies with capacity for eight telephone lines and twenty phones. The telephone system control cabinet had space for four circuit boards allowing the system to start with four telephone lines and ten Merlin Plus BIS or Merlin Classic telephone sets. The telephone system would expand from there in increments of four phone  lines by adding the second trunk card, or in an increment of ten telephones with the addition of the second telephone station card in those days telephone systems were yet to become acquainted with universal card slots and therefore of the four card slots in a Merlin Plus cabinet two slots could be used for telephone lines and the other card slots only for Merlin Plus telephone sets.

In the time period when the Merlin Plus business telephone systems were released the price of a telephone system was expensive when compared to todays standards. The Merlin BIS 10 telephone sold for over four hundred dollars in 1986.

Business telephone systems has made many advances in technology since the AT&T Merlin, the main selling point of the Merlin BIS telephones were the fact that a speaker phone was built into the telephone set base rather that being a two or three component unit as were most telephone speaker phone in those days. The speaker phone would be wired into a telephone, and a microphone would be wired into both units creating a mess of wires on a persons desktop that would rival the average stable.

To continue on to our next chapter in early business telephone systems, please feel free to follow the previous link.