I’m the last guy to critique the look and feel of operator consoles. I’m not the guy who says “lookie… at this sleek and modern design of a set that doesn’t do anything significant” crap
This set (again found off an eBay listing) is an operator console for ROLM based PBX systems. Despite the last patch of their flagship 9100 systems probably of two decades; some sets are still in use.
Of the worst attendant consoles to exist on this planet, the vintage Northern Telecom would win hands down.
Joe the UCX Guy had featured this console and used it during his days while he attended Purdue.
These switchboards or consoles were tied behind a central office switch such as DMS series or the carrier grade PBX – the SL100 (which I believe is different than the original SL1.)
In short, central office services are much less feature rich and thats why it has little functionality.
But why in the hell it’s so honking big is beyond me. It’s one of the many consoles of those days that required a 25 pair Amphenol cable to function.
I won’t say this console is “ugly” in the looks department per se, but I believe the user interface is beyond “ugly”. From knowing a little of the old school Mitels (the pure TDM flavors), it had complex features, but accessing them were over simplified. From my third hand research, I mean is that you had like up to 10 programmable features, then the softkeys, then the arrows to move the cursor around on screen.
They never sold special BLF modules for the console. The same PKM-12, 24 or 48 modules used for the SuperSet digital sets – would be plugged into this console. The ones originally used for the SuperSets kinda had consistency but if you had the 5448 or something of that generation it would look like a hodge podge type of deskset if you still are using these types of consoles, because even the most recent IP-based console is completely a carbon copy of the digital cousin.
The handset retainer is misleading, because (correct me if I am wrong) there is no switchhook, and functions like other consoles, you must initiate by pressing a line key.
*
As we are going into the spirit of the Christmas season, I thought to spoof “Ugly Christmas Sweaters” to do a similar thing to operator consoles.
Today’s will be 
This is a Mitel operator console. Before they were seriously electronic, the set was bulky, I believe metallic or heavy duty and the Busy Lamp Field would literally mean a field of lamps with no button access.
They stopped making this around the late 1980s, but wouldn’t be surprised to see these installed in SX 50, SX 200 or SX 200 Superswitches.
PICTURE IS NOT MY OWN. It was snatched by an eBay listing