Canadian Designs -- The Contempra Telephone

Gracing a wall or a desk of almost any Canadian home in the 1970s and 80s, the Contempra telephone was as ubiquitous as it was iconic. However, many do not realize that this design is truly Canadian. Contempra was developed in 1968 for the Northern Electric Company (a predecessor of Nortel) by industrial designer John Tyson. Tyson was the first industrial designer hired by Northern Electric at the start of its independent life as a Canadian firm, after the end of Northern Telecom’s ten-year licensing agreement with its American parent, Western Electric. R C Scrivener, then-president of Bell Canada, said of the project – “We could have adopted, as we have in the past, an American design. They have excellent models with many of the same features. But we thought we should produce our own.” The Contempra was designer Tyson’s first project for Northern Electric, and the telephone went on to be awarded a citation by the Canada Design Council, and it is now part of the permanent gallery of the Design Exchange. Eighteen Canadian industrial designs were registered on various aspects of the phone, including D29110 for a “Telephone Instrument” depicted below. Both lightweight and user-friendly, it incorporated a number of then-exotic plastics – ABS, polycarbonate, polypropylene, acrylic and styrene. It was a departure from telephone designs of the 1960s in several respects. Among the first to have a dial in the handset (later, a push-button model was also released), the design influenced telecommunications products around the world. The receiver had a unique angular shape that was designed to be cradled, rather than grasped in the hand. The design of the base unit was also unconventional – with the handset disposed lengthwise along the base, rather than across, the phone assembly was equally convenient to hang on the wall, or place flat on a table or desk. The name “Contempra” was meant to signify its futuristic orientation. The design team positioned the receiver slightly offset, on the right side of the base. This was to allow for other to-be-developed features to be built into the open area on the left side – apparently, these included a planned video screen! The widespread success of the Contempra telephone in Canadian households can be attributed to factors other than design, of course. It had an attractive price-point for its release in 1968 – only $1.75 per month to rent the phone from Bell Canada. And it had another appealing feature – colour. Telephones of the 1960s, available in “any colour as long as it’s black,” were drab and functional in appearance. From its release date, the Contempra was available in nine fashion colours, not one of which was black. Summary by: Jennifer Jannuska