ANTIQUE STYLE
TELEPHONES

• Telephone Booths
• History of the Pay Phone

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Egg Shaped Porcelain Telephone Booth with Pay Phone Very unique and eye-catching pay telephone booth circa 1970s, made by Benner-Nawman. The body of the egg is porcelain and there are some chips in the porcelain. Come with the payphone> See Close Up Photo Price: $1595 To Order: use SECURE ORDER FORM Other Inquiries, please email: durham@GameRoomAntiques.com

$1595

$1595

$1895

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Restored Antique Grey Pay Station with Brass Candlestick Telephone Circa: 1999 - 1920s, Restored antique payphone, great decorative items The phones sounds a different chime when you deposit a nickel, dime or quarter The cash draw has a lock, but it is in its open position. There is no key. The seller told me that the phone could be wired as an extension phone, but not for dialing calls. There is wiring in the base of the candlestick, but I do not know if it is complete. The phone is therefore being sold as is. I can't guarantee that will work. See Photo of Inside Wiring See Photo of Cash Draw & Lock See Photo of Coin Entry See Photo of Candlestick Dial Price: $1495 plus $39 shipping ($49 shipping west of Denver) Secure Order Form

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Dexluxe Antique Phone Booth with Antique Pay Phone Here is a quarter sawn oak phone booth that measures approximately 43 inches in width, 39 inches in depth, and 6'8" on height. It comes apart for easier shipping and movement into your house. The booth can be disassembled and placed on a pallet in a safe manner for transport to it's ultimate destination with assurance of a safe arrival. It will easily fit down any stairs that lead to a basement game room providing the height of the room is sufficient. Each side is independent from the others as well as the top is independent and the flooring as well. The top rests upon the tops of the four sides and the base is made of quartersawn oak boards secured to a plywood subfloor. The actual walls are affixed by round head slotted brass wood screws. The phone booth contains both a period pay phone and a user stool of the period. The period stool is mounted by slotted brass screws into the oak base floor. Any lighting within the phone booth can be applied subsequent to purchase and mounted to the back wall. The antique pay phone is not currently wired for use. See Close Up Photo of Antique Payphone. Price: $7500 plus shipping. To Order: use SECURE ORDER FORM Other Inquiries, please email: durham@GameRoomAntiques.com LG

$7500

$7500

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Other Gameroom Items

• Phone Booths and Pay Phones
• Barber Poles and Chairs
• Movie Theatre Candy Machines
• Lollipop Scales
• Vintage Gas Pumps for Sale
• Neon Clock

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HISTORY OF THE PAY PHONE

The following list of payphone highlights is excerpted from an AT&T press release.
See the Pay Phone and Telephone Booth web site for a list of items for sale.

Hightlights in Pay Phone History

• Pay telephone stations preceded the invention of the pay phone and existed as early as 1878. These stations were supervised by telephone company attendants or agents (such as an employee in a hotel where a station might be located) who collected the money due after people made their calls. Some pay stations utilized a fail-safe collection method: After making the connections for customers, attendants would lock them in booths so they couldn't leave without paying.

• In 1889, the first public coin telephone was installed by inventor William Gray at a bank in Hartford, Conn. It was a "postpay" machine (coins were deposited after the call was placed). Gray's previous claim to fame was inventing the inflatable chest protector for baseball.

• In 1898, the Western Electric No. 5 Coin Collector, the first automatic "prepay" station, went into use in Chicago. The depositing of coins before placing a call would gradually become the norm in pay phones until the introduction of "dial tone first" service in 1966.

• By 1902, there were 81,000 pay telephones in the United States.

• In 1905, the first outdoor Bell System coin telephone was installed on a Cincinnati street. It wasn't an instant hit; people apparently were reluctant to make private calls on a public thoroughfare.

  (Moose were not as shy when they first encountered outdoor pay phones. When Bell Laboratories designed a new glass and aluminum outdoor telephone booth in the 1950s, it was a great advancement over the wooden outdoor booths that had been in use for a number of years. And yet several booths ordered by the U.S. National Park Service were found mysteriously broken and battered. Park rangers soon knew the answer, though: It was mating season for moose. Amorous--but territorial--bulls were charging the booths whenever they saw their reflections in the glass.)

• In 1910, Western Electric and Gray Telephone Pay Station Co. signed an agreement for Gray to manufacture coin collectors for the Bell System using both Gray and Western Electric patents.

• The result of that agreement, the 50A coin collector, went into production in 1911. By the end of 1912, 25,000 of these coin telephones had been ordered for New York City alone. The 50A model had three coin slots--for nickels, dimes and quarters --and was a "prepay" machine. The basic design, though often modified, was so practical and reliable it remained in production until 1964. In 1965, Western Electric introduced the 50A's successor. Among other things, it had a single coin slot instead of three, and electronic signalling of coins deposited replaced mechanical bells.

• The booths that house pay phones have undergone more design changes than the phones themselves. At the turn of the century, indoor booths were constructed of durable hardwood, such as mahogany, with comfort and privacy in mind, and exhibited detailed craftsmanship. They were often carpeted.

  The "original" telephone booth is credited to Thomas Watson, the man who helped Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone. Watson's "booth" was made by draping blankets over the furniture in his room and crawling underneath to conduct early telephone experiments. One story says Watson, in order to hear, was insulating himself from street noises. Another story is that his landlady ordered Watson to be quieter; his shouting, albeit for the sake of science, was disturbing other boarders.

  In 1883 Watson designed a real booth. It was built of expensive wood, had a domed top with a ventilator, windows with screens, and a desk with pen and ink.

  Over the years, telephone booths have reflected their surroundings as well as the times. There have been phone booths resembling cable cars in San Francisco, and others resembling pagodas in New York City's Chinatown district. In the 1960s, as American architects designed glass-wall office buildings, wooden phone booths looked out of place in lobbies. Bell Laboratories designed an indoor glass and metal phone booth to better fit newer surroundings.

  Not all of the designs for phone booths have reached the market. An experimental "hands-free" booth in 1972 featured a microphone in front of the caller and a loudspeaker in the booth's ceiling. Observers noted that people readily tried the new arrangement but that, conditioned to speaking in the direction another voice is coming from, they were all shouting into the ceiling.

• In 1950, the first coin telephone mobile train service was established on the Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Washington.

• "Calling from your car" was first tested in Mobile Ala., and Chicago in 1957. Drive-up pay telephones proved popular and are still in use today.

• In 1960, the Bell System installed its one millionth pay telephone.

• In 1964, when the U.S. Treasury Department decided to change the metallic composition of U.S. coins, it consulted with Bell Laboratories to ensure the new coins would still function properly in pay phones.

• "Dial tone first" service was introduced in 1966 in Hartford, Conn. This essentially turned coin phones into emergency call stations because such calls could be made without first depositing coins.

• In 1977, "automatic coin telephone service" was introduced in Phoenix, Ariz. This allowed most pay telephone calls, including long-distance, to be made without operator assistance. A computer-controlled synthesized voice gave customers the necessary instructions.

• AT&T introduced "Charge-a-Call," a "coinless" pay phone, in 1978 (and the term "pay phone" began to replace "coin phone").

• In 1984, AT&T introduced the AT&T Card Caller, which featured a video screen with dialing instructions and allowed customers to charge calls by inserting an AT&T Calling Card. The Card Caller also was the first of AT&T's public phones to feature a "loud" button, which allows callers to control the listening volume. It helps the hearing-impaired as well as those having a hard time hearing because of environmental noise.

• In 1990, AT&T introduced the AT&T Public Phone 1000, which features a data port for laptop computer and portable fax use, speed dialing for select AT&T services and travelers assistance. This tabletop phone was designed primarily for airline lounges and hotels.

• The latest advance in pay phone technology is the AT&T Public Phone 2000. Introduced in the fall of 1991, the Public Phone 2000 has a built-in keyboard, a data port and a nine-inch color monitor. Besides offering all the traditional voice services, it enables travelers to use an array of services never before available from a pay phone. Public Phone 2000 users can access electronic mail and online databases, connect a portable fax machine or computer, obtain language translation services, speed-dial travel assistance services and even get weather forecasts.

Issued by AT&T, October 2, 1991

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