Mystery object stuck to my phone?

"telephone sanitisation" was a big business for many years, people would come round and professionally clean all the telephones in the office.

One of the things they could fit to your GPO 706 or 746 telephone was a Phonair telephone freshener!

If your handset started to smell, you could clip one of these in to make it smell nice and fresh!

Patented applied for in 1965, (granted in 1969) they were quite popular in homes and offices.

Especially if you were sharing a phone with a smoker (and in the 1960s/70s - of course you were!)

The patent is available online here:

[fumthings]

ah yes, they used to employ people to go around sanitizing telephones (mainly offices) and this device would have put them all out of a job. so we packed all the people with useless jobs into a space ship and sent them away. Then we all caught a terrible disease from an un-sanitized telephone and were nearly wiped out.