Photo: Brighton Guy
With the mighty rise of cellphones, will the phonebooth continue to stand around, waiting for someone in need to place a call?
More than a hundred years ago, an inventor named William Gray envisioned
a way to make a public phone call outside the home, and this led to the creation of the pay phone and eventually the phone booth.
In the early days, phone booths were known as "silence cabinets" because of
the fact that the reason they were created in the first place was to tune out background noise because the quality of the phone calls at that time were not so clear.
Shh...it's quiet in here.
Back then, phone booths were made out of hardwood such as mahogany, complete with ornate designs and plush carpet flooring. They were placed mainly in fancy hotels, railroad stations and banks, but became a common sight in many locations by 1910.
Over time, the wooden material was replaced by steel and hard plastic, to lessen environmental and man-made wear and tear (vandalism in other words!)
Nine million payphone calls were made in the U.S. everyday, and this was back in 1953!
But by the late 1990s, the number of phone booths declined because of the big boost of cellphone use.
How many lovers' calls were made from here, I wonder?
Did you ever drunk-dial a friend via a phone booth outside the club? Admit it!
Photo: OiMax
And what about the time when you made a long distance phone call, using a coin on a string? Bet you didn't know that trick eh?
Will you miss the sight of the lonely phone booth, waiting for you to make a call?
Comments
Old Comments
eve says
Thank you! :-)
Alka Sharma says