Have you ever been inside a phone booth?

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Sonic200
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06 Mar 2023, 11:18 am

I never have. Never even seen one before outside of shows at amusement parks.



IsabellaLinton
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06 Mar 2023, 11:19 am

You must be young.
I've used lots of them in my life.


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Where_am_I
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06 Mar 2023, 11:22 am

Yes. And it went something like this...

Image


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DeepHour
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06 Mar 2023, 11:54 am

Image



Like this one, do you mean? Yes, dozens of times in the 1960s and 1970s.


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Mountain Goat
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06 Mar 2023, 12:43 pm

Deep Hour put a photo of the ones we used to use. Used to have a choice between 2p or 10p (10p for longer calls) and later it was 5p and 10p, though the 5p's were larter than today and so were the old 10p's as for a number of years uncer decimalisation that came in just before I was born, we used shillings as 5p's and two shilling pieces as 10p's, so we freely mixed shillings and two shillings, some dating right back, with our "Modern" coinage as it saved the country lots of money to do that in the change to a decimal money system.
(When I was young, there were no 20p's and we used pound notes (If we were rich enough to have them) as there were no pound coins, and we used to use tiny half pennies as well.

The red phone boxes much later had their phones changed from the dialy type where one would turn the dial that had places to put ones finger in to turn the appropiate number, to the newer push button type, and with that change came the additional upgrade along with the coin slot so phone cards could be used. I bought a £5 phone card to keep on my bicycle tool kit incase I broke down, and never used it... So when phone boxes became in decline I tried it as one may as well use it (About a decade later), and the thing didn't work! Never ever used a phone card other than that, as we always used coins. Was rare for a household to have a phone in those days as most people walked to use the public phones. (We had our first private line in 1986 when we moved to a rural area and the only reason we had one was due to there being a two mile walk if we didn't). But yes. Usually only the wealthy people or businesses had land lines right up to the 1980's , but if one did need to phone someone, usually a wealthier family would give their number and send one of their kids to pass a message on... We were pretty well.organized in village life back then. There were when I was very young, telegrams instead, so one would go to a post office and pay to have one sent. A post office "Message boy" was employed to take the message at whatever location the postoffice was that recieved the message (Messages were sent down phonelines via standard morse code and one was charged per character (Individual letter), so the message boy would take the message (Either via running or via the postoffice (Of his own) bicycle, to thehouse and people it was intended foe and ask if a reply was needed).

Some rural places in Wales still have phoneboxes with phones as I saw one a coin type few months ago, thouvh it was a push button type.


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06 Mar 2023, 1:00 pm

It's probably the place I've never had sex but I have used them for other purposes.


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06 Mar 2023, 1:04 pm

babybird wrote:
It's probably the place I've never had sex but I have used them for other purposes.
???


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06 Mar 2023, 1:42 pm



Yeah, I've been in plenty of phone booths. Used to keep change in my pocket in case I needed to use one. For the most part, they were in working order around here.



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06 Mar 2023, 3:10 pm

There used to be a phone booth on my way to school as a kid.
I used to visit it every day I walked past to check if there was change in the return slot.
If so, lollies from the school shop!


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lostonearth35
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07 Mar 2023, 12:49 am

Yes, but only so I can change into my superhero costume.



renaeden
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07 Mar 2023, 6:42 am

There's a Telstra phone box next to the delicatessen (called a deli) two minutes drive from where I live. It gets vandalised every now and then but I have seen people use it.

I remember when I was a kid, me and a friend would squeeze into a phone box but I can't remember if we called anyone. They had buttons to push instead of the rotary dial.



PhosphorusDecree
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07 Mar 2023, 7:21 am

Yes, though the last time was around 2007. Used them regularly when I first left home. I also used them a lot during a long trip to India. Fun fact: long-distant phone boothes there are called "Stanard Trunk Dial", and can be identified by a sign reading "S.T.D." :lol:

There is a single surviving phone booth in my neighbourhood. In the town centre, a couple of the classic red cast-iron phone boothes have been repurposed to house difibrillators.


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FleaOfTheChill
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07 Mar 2023, 8:31 am

PhosphorusDecree wrote:
Fun fact: long-distant phone boothes there are called "Stanard Trunk Dial", and can be identified by a sign reading "S.T.D." :lol:


Bloody hell, I almost spit out my coffee reading that. :lol: Outstanding. I'm digging the idea of the std booth. That makes me way happier than it should.



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04 Jun 2023, 4:39 pm

Whoa... even though I've been on this rock long enough to have been in myriad phone booths, I seriously think it was only a handful of times. Now, public phones on a pole or a wall, that's a different story. (I grew up in "SoCal", where it's sunny, and never rains... no need for booths)


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04 Jun 2023, 4:48 pm

I don't think I have. I've seen phone booths on television and pictures but I can't recall ever actually seeing one in person. I'm also not someone whose gone out alot.



kitesandtrainsandcats
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04 Jun 2023, 5:10 pm

Several different styles.
And their sound insulation gives the voice a different sound than when speaking in other environments.
I have heard seekers in radio spots sometimes have that same sound quality.


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