Payphone (30 photos)

Category: Interesting photo stories, Nostalgia, PEGI 0+

15 March 2010

How were payphones invented? What are payphones like in other countries? Very informative collection!

In 1889, American William Gray's wife fell ill. The future inventor then spent a lot of time and effort persuading one of the owners of a few telephone sets to allow him to make a much-needed call. Subsequently, Gray set himself the goal of creating a phone that could perform the functions of a cashier. The initial version of the device was only a prototype of a payphone. In 1891, Gray established his own telephone company, constantly worked to improve the devices, and did not forget to obtain patents for his inventions in a timely manner.

This first payphone, or payphone in the modern sense, was demonstrated in 1890 at the World Exhibition in Paris. And in the same year, the first public payphone was installed in the American city of Hartford. The controller was tasked with collecting fees for the use of this innovation.

In Russia, a payphone first appeared in Moscow in 1909. And since then, for a long time, this type of communication has not lost its popularity in Russia, despite the fact that it was pay phones that bravely took on the most powerful bursts of aggression. It took a lot of work for engineers to come up with more and more new models of anti-vandal street payphones. And the “kopeck piece” (2 kopeck coin) has been a mandatory coin for city travel for many years. Of course, the development of modern mobile communications has clearly reduced the severity of the problems - both with vandals and with two-room apartments. And it also canceled one of the most famous methods of street dating: “Girl, can you tell me where the nearest pay phone is? Don’t you have two kopecks?”

This payphone lasts for more than one generation.