Appareil Mobile BCI Modello 309-7

Appareil Mobile BCI Model 309-7 from the office of Pierre Laval
This French telephone from the 1930s, used in the office of Pierre Laval, carries the quiet weight of bureaucratic precision and political intrigue. Produced by the national communications agency PTT, it served as a conduit for decisions, confidences, and commands during a turbulent era in French history.
Pierre Laval, a complex and controversial figure, held multiple high offices during the Third Republic and later under the Vichy regime. His career, marked by shifting allegiances and decisive influence, left a lasting imprint on France’s wartime governance. This device, once part of his working environment, is a rare witness to the machinery of state and the voices that shaped it.
Preserved for decades in deep storage, the phone remains untouched by time, its silence charged with memory. It is not merely a technical relic, but a fragment of institutional memory—where voices traveled through wires, shaping destinies in whispered tones.
To own this object is to hold a piece of political history, a machine that once connected minds across rooms and regimes.
 
Doktor Lazarus Archaeologist, Historian, Collector, Independent Curator