House originally built in 1870 ish, with coal oil piping, knob and tube, all the way to grounded Romex, so, this could be any vintage allowing for electricity. 220 outlet? Note the "Made in Japan" tag.

Looks like a telephone jack. My parent's house from the 1940s has them.

Yep. That's it. That was easy. Thanks. I google image searched it but it didn't pull it. A search of your suggestion gets a similar item.

Well the hole that housed this now holds a Cat6e Ethernet cable keystone jack but it's nice to know I can use my US Robotics 56k Modem if things get bad. It's kind of cool to see the progress of telecommunication and technology.

Red, yellow, black, green. The tip/ring colors of old house wire. For phones.

That was a huge step forward, phones you could unplug. Before that, they were hard wired in

CanyonAg77 said:

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That was a huge step forward, phones you could unplug. Before that, they were hard wired in

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I can imagine. Here is the original and only one for the house when it became available: the plug in my OP is from another room which may have been later.

I don't even have a home phone now. I just have my mobile. People from around the world can contact me just about any place on the planet instantaneously 24/7/365.

And…I can order a new package of Pumpkinseed Senkos, on the creek, right now, for delivery to my door tomorrow if I so choose.

Hell of a time to be alive, eh?

I grew up on a party line phone where you had ro make sure no one else was using it, and it was a long distance call to the county seat, 12 miles away. You couldn"t dial direct, an operator had to connect you

About 15 years ago, a neighbor and i were in the middle of a wheat field during harvest. We each got father"s day calls from our college-age daughters. Hisvwas in Germany, mine wasin Costa Rica

I think that was when it really hit home how phones had changed

One day, cell phones are going to be as dated as the one in the pic. I have no idea how to improve on it but I figure someone will figure that out. Guess it's going in our head next.

I wired a few of those phone jacks for my folks years ago.