A 1961 Bell Telephone System ad shows designs for the company's latest phone booths: the Airlight booth, the walk-up phone and the drive-up phone.
A 1960 Bell Telephone ad shows off new pay phone designs that include a walk-up phone, a drive-up phone, a semi-booth and an Airlight booth.
A 1961 Bell Telephone System ad shows designs for the company's latest phone booths: the Airlight booth, the walk-up phone and the drive-up phone.
A 1960 Bell Telephone ad shows off new pay phone designs that include a walk-up phone, a drive-up phone, a semi-booth and an Airlight booth.
Roadside conveniences are woven into the fabric of motoring. Cars require gas and fluids — exclusively until recently, while drivers and passengers require food, rest and sanitary services.
During the pre-technology dark ages, a free roadmap, neat folds mutilated beyond recognition and with whatever important information undoubtedly located at the crease, was often found jammed between the corner of the dashboard and windshield, triangular vent windows wedged open to deflect the breeze, or stuffed between the seat cushions, were as common as coffee cups and water bottles are today, and available free at rest areas and service stations.
Bluetooth used to be an oral malady and mobile phones were futuristic behemoths hardwired to road-going luxury barges. We skipped right over Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone and jumped headfirst into Dick Tracy’s watch phone when Apple’s “i” everything washed like a wave over society.
That’s not to say road warriors were incommunicado; quite the contrary — Western Electric's prolific pay phone was typically just steps away.
The telephone, widely credited to Alexander Graham Bell, whose last name would spawn phone companies all over the country, was patented in 1876. Just 13 years later, the first pay phone was installed at a bank in Hartford, Conn., a post-pay honor system device.
Most early pay phones required a coin to talk to an operator and some were useless unless a coin was deposited to unlock the crank or a sliding door in front of the mouthpiece, or to access the phone. One extreme example locked the phone booth door, trapping the caller unless they deposited the appropriate coins. The operator would tell the caller how much to deposit and the coin would hit a bell that the operator could hear to determine if the correct amount was deposited. That coin-bell system served operators and phone companies well for years.
By 1902, there were 81,000 pay phones across the U.S., and the year 1905 saw the first outdoor coin-operated pay phone installed on a street in Cincinnati.
Fast forward a few decades to the 1950s, and cheaper, more rugged glass and aluminum pay phone enclosures were replacing wooden ones. The first drive-up pay phone was tested, appropriately, in Mobile, Ala., in 1957, and by 1960, Bell Systems had installed their millionth pay phone.
The year 1961 brought about the walk up pay phone that did away with the full enclosure and made pay phones less costly to install. The “Airlight” booth was still around, named for the light and vent fan that switched on automatically with the closing of the door.
For the convenience of the motorist, the drive-up pay phone started becoming popular with the phone exposed and mounted at a convenient height for a driver to roll down their window and make a call.
In 1966, the “dial tone first” service was introduce. These were the pay phones of my lifetime that allowed emergency or operator-assisted calls without prepaying. How many people “checked in” while on the road by placing a collect call? The person answering would refuse the call, as previously agreed, but now knew the caller was OK. Later, the operator would play the “name” that you said onto a recording when making contact with the receiver.
“This is the operator calling, will you accept a collect call from ‘Eric I. GottoOrlando.’” I guess we all gamed the system a little.
Public pay phones and transportation go hand in hand. Every hub of public portage from bus stations to train stations to airports had banks of phones available to travelers since the first at the Barclay Street ferry house in New York City in 1890 that accepted nickels, dimes, quarters, half-dollars and “cartwheel” silver dollars.
Bored kids and down on their luck adults could pass the time checking the change slots for forgotten coin returns.
Phone companies were always on the lookout for new pay phone installation locations. Popular street corners or commercial sites were obvious and for a time they even put phone booths aboard larger transatlantic ocean liners and when the ships docked lines were run ashore and hooked to connections on the pier.
Shysters have always found a way around the system and pay phones are no different. One enterprising lawyer back in post-Depression era New York kept a portable typewriter and all his files in three dime lockers located next to the bank of pay phones at Penn Station. He printed up business cards with three phone booth phone numbers on it and received all his incoming calls free of charge.
A landmark case involving a “reasonable expectation of privacy” is also why pay phone became a source for criminal communication. This made it illegal for law enforcement to tap pay phones without a warrant and permitted everything from illegal gambling operations to criminal enterprises to pass through phone lines undetected. Phone booths became pop culture icons in movies and mysteries acting as convenient locations for mob hits to horror scenes. The term “drop a dime” or “diming out” someone derived from reporting a criminal to the police on a pay phone.
In 1995, there were 2.6 million pay phones around the country but the numbers would decline from there. By the new millennium it was all over as phone companies, beginning with Bell South, which in 2001 started pulling their public phones.
We all know what happened next. Cellphones took over, and life has never been the same. But for a time, as Bell Telephone Systems said in their 1959 ad, phone booths were “like a lighthouse on the highway.”
Eric and Michelle Meltzer own and operate Fryeburg Motors, a licensed, full-service automotive sales and service facility at 26 Portland St. in Fryeburg, Maine. More than a business, cars are a passion, and they appreciate anything that drives, rides, floats or flies. For more, email fryeburgmotors@gmail.com.
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