HAMER524@ruby.vcu.edu (Robert M. Hamer) (03/23/91)
AT&T has set up a telephone exhibit in the lobby area of the Richmond (VA) airport, just at the base of the elevator going up to the gate area. I thought I'd describe it, although I wish I could post photographs because (a) part of the impact is visual, and (b) I was too lazy to copy, word for word, all the identification plates, commentary, etc. The display subtly (not quite so subtle) promotes the role of AT&T in the development of the pay telephone. So it's a pay telephone oriented exhibit. It consists of four exhibits, each about four feet (wide) by eight feet (high), each with a display on both sides, making about eight displays. I will discuss them in chronological order. In the center were some poster units with a bunch of AT&T propaganda which I didn't read. The first phone was labelled "1889," and the commentary said that telephones were 13 years old, that 200,000 phones were in use, including one pay phone in a bank in Hartford, CT. Phone service consisted primarily of local service, with about 7,000 toll calls made daily. The longest stretch of phone wire was the New York to Boston run, and ten minutes on that stretch cost $4.00. Local phone service was $23.00 per month (expensive considering how much people made...). The telephone on that display was a Gray Model 5 Coin Collector telephone. It consisted of a wooden box, about perhaps one foot deep by two feet wide, by one foot in height, and mounted on top of that wooden box was a smaller wooden box, perhaps one foot high by six inches deep by six inches wide. The smaller box had two bells as a ringer on high on the front, a mouthpiece/mike at the end of a projection in the middle, and an earphone in a rack on the side at the end of a brown cloth-covered wire. The large wooden box at the bottom had five slots on the top surface, each with a large metal button next to it, which said, in turn, "One Dollar," "Half Dollar," "One Quarter," "One Dime," "One Nickel" On the left front was a brass plate containing instructions in all caps (no punctuation but divided up into lines that sort of broke it logically. A slash in my quote indicates a line.): "DIRECTIONS / CALL CENTRAL IN THE USUAL MANNER / WHEN TOLD BY OPERATOR / DROP COIN IN PROPER CHANNEL AND / PUSH PLUNGER DOWN" On the left front was another brass plate that said, "No 5 / William Gray / 1889" (again, slashes indicate a new line). The commentary said in part that William Gray had conceived the first automatic coin telephone in 1889 when he was frustrated in trying to find a telephone to call a doctor for his sick wife. It said that he was an inventor, and the invention for which he was best known prior to the coin telephone was the inflatable chest protector for baseball. The next exhibit was labelled 1908 and had two phones: on the left, a modified 1317 standard wall phone, and on the right a modified desk set. The accompanying text explained that in those days AT&T often combined a standard AT&T phone with a separate coin collector made by the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company. The wall phone was a wooden box on which the phone itself was hung; there were three slots at the top (looking like the familiar slots on the wall phones I knew when I grew up rather than just holes in the surface of a wooden box as on the 1889 model) for the quarter, dime, and nickel, and the mouthpiece stuck out of the front of the phone. The earpiece rested on a rack attached to the left side of the wooden box. A brass plate on the phone stated, "Directions / Call the central office in the usual manner. Do not deposit money until told by the operator. / Gray Tel. Pay. Sta. Co., H'F'D, C.T., Patd. Feb 8, '98" (Anyone know what H'F'D is? Could I just have read it wrong and it was M'F'D for "Manufactured"?) The desk phone consisted of a standard desk set (You know, looked like a candlestick with the mouthpiece at the top, and the earpiece racked on the side) that was attached via an arm around its center to a box containing three coin slots at the top with a brass plate that said, "Do not deposit money until operator asks for it." The next exhibit was labelled 1914 and looked familiar: the phone and coin box were all black metal and one piece; it was no longer a phone stuck on a coin collector. The earpiece wire was still covered with brown cloth and the mouthpiece still stuck out the front. In the description that follows I'm using the @ sign for the cent sign (you remember, a c with a slash through it) because my keyboard doesn't have one. The paper/cardboard plate on the front said, "Telephone number is KL5-099 / 1. Please deposit @ 5 / 2. Dial number / For directory assistance, call operator" There was one thing funny: THERE WAS NO DIAL ON THE PHONE. An error on the part of the AT&T person constructing the exhibit, putting a dial-oriented instruction card with a phone with no dial. Anyway, This was the first phone in which money could be deposited before you talked to the operator because she could return it if she needed to. The text said it was a 50A Coin Telephone designed by Gray Telephone. The text also said that coast- to-coast phone service was available for $66.90 for 10 minutes. Boston-NY was still $4.00 for 10 minutes, and local service had declined to $10.00 / month. The next exhibit was dated 1927, and used the same basic box as above. It did have a dial, with letters and numbers, no Q or Z, but the words "operator" on the zero digit on the dial. New York to London service was available at $75.00 for 3 minutes. The instruction card was above the dial. The earpiece wire was covered with black rubber, not brown cloth. The next exhibit (1945) was a REAL PHONE BOOTH, containing essentially the same phone as the same black box as the 1927 exhibit, but the mouthpiece and earpiece were integrated into a handset, which hung on a switchhook. The remainder of the exhibits (1978, and two 1989) were uninteresting modern phones.
FVEST@ducvax.auburn.edu (Floyd Vest) (03/25/91)
[23 Mar 91 07:13:00 GMT] HAMER524@ruby.vcu.edu (Robert M. Hamer) wrote: > Pay. Sta. Co., H'F'D, C.T., Patd. Feb 8, '98" (Anyone know what H'F'D > is? Could I just have read it wrong and it was M'F'D for "Manufactured"?) I suspect it was "H'F'D, C'T" or something like that ... Hartford, Connecticut, the birthplace of the payphone and the home of William Gray. The hint was contained in your own post: > The first phone was labelled "1889," and the commentary said that > telephones were 13 years old, that 200,000 phones were in use, > including one pay phone in a bank in Hartford, CT. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Floyd Vest <fvest@ducvax.auburn.edu> <fvest@auducvax.bitnet> Manager, Administrative Systems--Auburn University, Alabama USA Voice: +1 205 844 4512 BBS: +1 205 745 3989 FIDO: 1:3613/3
trebor@uunet.uu.net (Robert J Woodhead) (03/25/91)
HAMER524@ruby.vcu.edu (Robert M. Hamer) writes: > manner. Do not deposit money until told by the operator. / Gray Tel. > Pay. Sta. Co., H'F'D, C.T., Patd. Feb 8, '98" (Anyone know what H'F'D > is? Could I just have read it wrong and it was M'F'D for "Manufactured"?) Most likely H'F'D is a contraction of Hartford; thus, "Hartford, C.T." Robert J. Woodhead, Biar Games / AnimEigo, Incs. trebor@foretune.co.jp