I appreciate the response to my earlier question -- this looks like a great
newsgroup.
Whenever I meet a telecommunications techie I ask them about this old
trick --I have yet to find anyone else who ever used it:
Somewhere around 1953 when I was a teen, you could get all the free payphone
calling you wanted from a phonebooth by using a booby-pin. The mouth and
earpieces of the always-black plastic (bakelite?) handset were a filled-in
circle of perforations-- you spread the bobby-pin, poked one end into a
center hole in the mouthpiece, the other end into one of the perimeter
mouthpiece holes, then touched the other end of bobby-pin to exposed metal
on the phone body. It would usually produce a small spark, and then you got
the dial-tone, made your call. All of the booths near the teen hangouts had
bobby-pins lined up ready to go.
I always wondered why AT&T allowed that to work, and why(?) the
coin-collector or service man wasn't wise to this openly used rip-off but
did not even take the bobby-pins away.
I would love to hear from someone who used to service these and get some
feedback on that crazy phenomenon.
Thanks, pflu
>I appreciate the response to my earlier question -- this looks like a great
>newsgroup.
>Whenever I meet a telecommunications techie I ask them about this old
>trick --I have yet to find anyone else who ever used it:
>Somewhere around 1953 when I was a teen, you could get all the free payphone
>calling you wanted from a phonebooth by using a booby-pin.
[snip]
The most common pay phones, until the 1970s, were "ground start". What
this meant was that the phone was de-energized, so to speak, and
there was no dial tone in it, until...
... until the "hot" wire in the phone cable was shorted to ground.
This signalled the central office to activate the wires and
send a dial tone across.
The official way this occurred was when the pay phone detected
a coin falling through it and toggled an electrical switch.
There were, as many people soon discovered, other ways to
initiate that ground connection... Or so I've heard.
In the 1970s, as "dial tone first" systems were implemented
(primarily to enable calls to 911 without pre-paying) various
tweaks were added. And of course, as privately owned payphones
came into common use, and as more and more "intelligence"
and processing was placed in the phone, the world moved on.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
>I appreciate the response to my earlier question -- this looks like a great
>newsgroup.
>
>Whenever I meet a telecommunications techie I ask them about this old
>trick --I have yet to find anyone else who ever used it:
>
>Somewhere around 1953 when I was a teen, you could get all the free payphone
>calling you wanted from a phonebooth by using a booby-pin. The mouth and
>earpieces of the always-black plastic (bakelite?) handset were a filled-in
>circle of perforations-- you spread the bobby-pin, poked one end into a
>center hole in the mouthpiece, the other end into one of the perimeter
>mouthpiece holes, then touched the other end of bobby-pin to exposed metal
>on the phone body. It would usually produce a small spark, and then you got
>the dial-tone, made your call. All of the booths near the teen hangouts had
>bobby-pins lined up ready to go.
>
>I always wondered why AT&T allowed that to work, and why(?) the
>coin-collector or service man wasn't wise to this openly used rip-off but
>did not even take the bobby-pins away.
Geeze, we just used to unscrew the receiver and ground it. Bell
system payphones were ground start, so grounding the receiver put a
ground on your side of the set and drew dial tone. Problem was the
operator could tell if the coins didn't refund, so she got an idea
that you didn't use a coin in the first place. Then they started
using armored cords and epoxy on the handset parts.
BTW it was MUCH later when I played with payphones. Of course in my
small town, we had postpay, so you could shout through the receiver
PICK ME UP AT XXX and it worked just as weill.
Carl
In rural areas there was a dial-tone-first "post pay" design that
worked a bit differently. One listened for dial tone then dialed the
number. Upon actually reaching the desired party (not a busy or no
answer), one would then put in a dime or two nickels to allow the
transmitter to function. These pay phones were simpler all way
around--the phone was simpler since it didn't have a deposit holder--
the coins just dropped straight through. The CO gear was simpler,
too.
As an aside I noticed that all the payphones in my village have been
removed; the last ones in front of the convenience store were just
pulled out.
At one time a few square blocks of the village center had pay phone
at:
1) In front of convenience store (pair).
2) in front of the drugstore (booth)
3) in front of pizza shop
4) inside lobby of bar
5) outside of bar
6) inside nice restaurant
7) semi-public inside coffeeshop.
One pay phone remains at the train station, but I think it is
essentially subsidized by the railroad to serve as an emergency
telephone. It appears various railroads are doing that. The phone co
will install a payphone anywhere, but the property owner must
guarantee a minimum revenue or they must make up the difference. I
would guess that the cost of a stardard public pay phone is less than
the cost of a dedicated 'lift-receiver for help' phone directly
connected to a 911 center, and of course more flexible for public use.
Not everyone, even today, has a cellphone, and even for those that do
the batteries run out, the phones get lost, the pay-as-you-go contract
is not kept up, etc.
> Whenever I meet a telecommunications techie I ask them about this old
> trick --I have yet to find anyone else who ever used it:
> Somewhere around 1953 when I was a teen, you could get all the free payphone
> calling you wanted from a phonebooth by using a booby-pin. The mouth and
> earpieces of the always-black plastic (bakelite?) handset were a filled-in
> circle of perforations-- you spread the bobby-pin, poked one end into a
> center hole in the mouthpiece, the other end into one of the perimeter
> mouthpiece holes, then touched the other end of bobby-pin to exposed metal
> on the phone body.
This trick was beautifully used in the movie WarGames(1983)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/
Showing it in the movie must have put an end to the last payphones where it
worked.
Koos
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