Candlestick telephone

Along the way he picks up a sidekick, an old candlestick telephone, whose voice is rendered with a kazoo, and discovers an evil villain has been amassing eyeglass lenses to create a "Death Ray of Death." The villain's convoluted scheme turns out to be a ruse to get the space custodian to fire up a giant particle accelerator, thus creating the theoretical physics particle called the Higgs bosun.

Nick Kleyweg of Sioux City, Iowa, a candlestick telephone collector, says they're popular in part because of that variety.

Alan said: "Jim always said candlestick telephones were the most elegant things he'd ever seen.

Candlestick telephones were catching on, and soon the automobile would supplant the horse, greatly increasing mobility.

Mr Hill, a wireless collector himself with about 2,000 exhibits in his privately owned wireless and telephone museum in Devon, added: 'In addition to the enthusiasts, we have noticed at recent shows a steadily growing number of people who are looking for well-restored vintage bakelite and candlestick telephones, television sets from the 1950s and wind-up gramophones - vintage equipment which has been saved from the scrapheap and then lovingly restored.