General Electric 7-4700 Clock Radio Telephone

Another member in my (unintentional) clock radio collection, General Electric's 7-4700 model featured a telephone built in alongside the usual clock radio functions. Now you can wake up to music, buzzer or telemarketing!

Shortly after finalizing this video, I discovered a picture online showing one with the original manual. This model was seemingly part of GE's "Advantage Series" and marketed as the "Wake-Up Call".

This one survived the nasty basement flood of 2004, although it has lots of little scuffs and scratches that make it less than perfect. I gave all of the controls a good cleaning with DeOxit, let it have some time to dry and got a nasty surprise. The clock logic locked up shortly after plugging it in, so I tried again. That time the display didn't even come on. I'm not sure what happened. It was fine by the time I brought it upstairs, so I made this video right away. It's still working well. Hopefully it was an isolated incident.

I forgot to mention two very interesting things. First, this radio will actually play from its 9 volt backup battery, although performance is reduced. The clock digits also remain faintly illuminated when running from the battery.

Secondly, I once fired a camera flash at this thing from close range. For reasons completely unknown to me, this caused random portions of the display to blank. They didn't come back until several minutes later. I've never heard of such a thing--unless maybe the LEDs were somehow also capable of acting as photodetectors and caused the display driver circuit to "spin out"? I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• general
• electric
• clock
• radio
• model
• 7-4700
• telephone
• alarm
• demonstrate
• use
• restore
• playing
• uxwbill

[phxcoyote27]

I have the exact same model with date code 2325 and serial number 001683. Think I bought it around 1982 when I was in 7th or 8th grade. It was highly useful for me to have a phone in my bedroom back in those days. Interestingly, while the phone looks like a touchtone, it's actually a pulse dialer (at least mine is). I really liked the fully adjustable SNOOZ and SLEEP buttons. Battery backup was really nice, too. First time I had seen that. I am about to discard mine if you need any spare parts.

[uxwbill]

@phxcoyote27 This one dials in pulse mode as well. I didn't find an obvious way to change it, though I seem to remember that it could be done.

Why are you discarding yours? If it still works, you could donate it to a place like the Goodwill or Salvation Army.

[thecooldude9999]

what i do is put a trimline phone in by my bed, but TURN OFF the ringer, helpful.

[uxwbill]

@thecooldude9999 I was probably asking for it by turning up the ringer on the phone I used. I still did not expect it to be *that* loud.

[ScoobyBaseball]

Is it "LOL" upside down, or the two times (at that moment) add up to 1920? Is it even the 7:07? Hmmm...

[uxwbill]

@ScoobyBaseball It's the first...when I did the 24-hour capable clock radio video earlier, I programmed in 13:37 as the alarm time. People did notice that one.

[TheTrueVoiceOfReason]

Bill,

LED's are actually bi-directional, and can be used in photodetection circuits. It is possible to induce a voltage across them with a bright light. A very good resource on this is from a living electronics legend, Forrest M. Mims III. You can Google him to find his site.

[tubageek2006]

if you ever happen to come across one of those again, please let me know. This would help cut down the clutter on my dresser.

[thecooldude9999]

@uxwbill yeah, they were designed when most people only had one phone for the whole house, so you had to hear it.

[phxcoyote27]

@uxwbill My kids (when they were little) found it amusing to lift the handset and walk around with it. Eventually we disconnected the handset so they would stop leaving the phone off the hook. Of course, after disconnecting the handset, it was promptly lost and most likely discarded (haven't seen it in years). Without the phone, it's just a bulky clock radio (assuming one is handy enough to defeat the radio muting function)...not too worthy of donating.

[airsoftmasters]

I have a GE 7-4663a; best radio I ever had.

[RetroVintageItems27]

Ahhhh if you have seen my videos... Yes funny thing people do call at 2:00 and wake me up, on WE phones I have about 2 ones hooked up in my room.

Retro