alt Hacker NewsThe batteries were either charged using a "telephone magneto", or were taken to a local town to be charged off of mains electricity:
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pyrale • yesterday at 4:42 PM
From what I understand, the crank was used to ring the exchange's bell, not to reload the phone battery.
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My father in law grew up in the Denver area. His father made his living as a handyman, and one of his regular customers was Molly Brown (the Titanic survivor known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"). Every week he would go to her house to exchange her radio battery, then bring the old battery back to his workshop for charging.