A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a
payphone and designed for a
telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth door while using the payphone inside.
In the United States and Canada, "telephone booth" (or "phone booth") is the commonly used term for the structure, while in the
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...
(particularly the United Kingdom and Australia), it is a "phone box".
Such a booth usually has lighting, a door to provide privacy, and windows to let others know if the booth is in use. The booth may be furnished with a printed directory of local telephone numbers, and a booth in a formal setting, such as a hotel, may be furnished with paper and pen and even a seat. An outdoor booth may be made of metal and plastic to withstand the elements and heavy use, while an indoor booth (once known as a silence cabinet) may have more elaborate architecture and furnishings.
Most outdoor booths feature the name and logo of the telephone service provider.
History
![Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company public telephone room- Miami, Florida (9449121769)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Southern_Bell_Telephone_and_Telegraph_Company_public_telephone_room-_Miami%2C_Florida_%289449121769%29.jpg)
The world's first telephone box called "Fernsprechkiosk", was opened on 12 January 1881 at
Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Platz (, ''Potsdam Square'') is a public square and traffic intersection in the center of Berlin, Germany, lying about south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corne ...
, Berlin. To use it, one had to buy paper tickets called Telefonbillet which allowed for a few minutes of talking time. In 1899, it was replaced by a coin-operated telephone.
William Gray is credited with inventing the coin payphone in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
in 1889, and George A. Long was its developer. The first telephone booth in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
, England, was probably installed near the
Staple Inn
Staple Inn is a part-Tudor period, Tudor building on the south side of High Holborn street in the City of London, London, England. Located near Chancery Lane tube station, it is used as the London venue for meetings of the Institute and Faculty ...
in
High Holborn
High Holborn ( ) is a street in Holborn and Farringdon Without, Central London, which forms a part of the A40 route from London to Fishguard. It starts in the west at the eastern end of St Giles High Street and runs past the Kingsway and ...
in May 1903.
In the UK, the creation of a national network of telephone boxes commenced in 1920 starting with the K1 which was made of concrete, however the city of
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.
It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south-east ...
is noted for having its individual phone service, Kingston Communications, with cream coloured phone boxes, as opposed to classic royal red in the rest of Britain. Also, The Post Office was forced into allowing a less strident grey with red glazing bars scheme for areas of natural and architectural beauty. Ironically, some of these areas that have preserved their telephone boxes have now painted them red.
Design
Starting in the 1970s, pay telephones were less and less commonly placed in booths in the United States. In many cities where they were once common, telephone booths have now been almost completely replaced by non-enclosed pay phones. In the United States, this replacement was caused, at least in part, by an attempt to make the pay telephones more accessible to disabled people. However, in the United Kingdom, telephones remained in booths more often than the non-enclosed setup. Although still fairly common, the number of phone boxes has declined sharply in Britain since the late 1990s due to the boom of mobile phones.
Many locations that provide pay-phones mount the phones on
kiosk
Historically, a kiosk () was a small garden pavilion open on some or all sides common in Iran, Persia, the Indian subcontinent, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward. Today, several examples of this type of kiosk still exist ...
s rather than in booths—this relative lack of privacy and comfort discourages lengthy calls in high-demand areas such as airports.
Special equipment installed in some telephone booths allows a caller to use a computer, a portable fax machine, or a telecommunications device for the deaf.
Privacy
Phone booths have been subject to wireless surveillance by law enforcement. For example, the landmark
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
case of ''
Katz v. United States
''Katz v. United States'', 389 U.S. 347 (1967), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court redefined what constitutes a "search" or "seizure" with regard to the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constituti ...
'' involved the Constitutional question of whether the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
(FBI) could install a listening device outside of the booth.
Paying for the call
Coins
The user of the booth pays for the call by depositing coins into a slot on the telephone. With some telephones the deposit is made before making the call, and the coins are returned if the call attempt is unsuccessful (busy, no answer, etc.). With other types of telephone coins are not deposited until the call has been made and the caller hears their party answer. The deposit of coins then permits two-way conversation to proceed.
Cards
Calls may be paid for by entering a payment code on the telephone's keypad, by
swipe-card ("Swipe & Call") or by using a
telephone card
A telephone card, calling card or phonecard for short, is a credit card-size plastic or paper card, used to pay for telephone services (often international or long-distance calling). It is not necessary to have the physical card except with a st ...
. Some pay phones are equipped with a card reader that allows a caller to make payment with a credit card.
Collect call
A caller who possesses no means of payment may have the phone company's operator ask the call recipient if the recipient is willing to make payment for the call; this is known as "reversing the charges", "reverse charged call" or a "collect call". It is also sometimes possible to place a call to a phone booth if the intended recipient is known to be waiting at the booth, but not all phone booths allow such incoming calls. Long before "computer hacking" was a common phenomenon, creative mischief-makers devised tactics for obtaining free phone usage through a variety of techniques, including several for defeating the electro-mechanical payment mechanisms of telephone booths—early methods of phone
phreaking
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. The term ''phreak'' is a ...
.
Emergency calls
Some jurisdictions require phone booths to provide dial-tone first services, allowing coinless access to the emergency telephone number and the switchboard operator, and do not require any coins or credit card payments for dialing such calls (''Verizon New York Inc. v. Environmental Control Board of the City of New York'', New York State Appellate Division First Department December 29, 2009).
Recent developments
Wireless services
The increasing use of mobile phones has led to a decreased demand for pay telephones, but the increasing use of laptops is leading to a new kind of service. In 2003, service provider
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
announced that they would begin offering wireless computer connectivity in the vicinity of their phone booths in Manhattan. As of 2006, the Verizon wifi telephone booth service was discontinued in favor of the more expensive
Verizon Wireless' EVDO
Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO, EVDO, etc.) is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access. EV-DO is an evolution of the CDMA2000 (IS-2000) standard which s ...
system.
This allows a computer user to connect with remote computer services by means of a
short-range device
A short-range device (SRD), described by ECC Recommendation 70-03, is a radio-frequency transmitter device used in telecommunication for the transmission of information, which has low capability of causing harmful interference to other radio equ ...
stationed within the booth. The caller pays for usage by means of a pre-arranged account code stored inside the caller's computer. Wireless access is motivating telephone companies to place wireless stations at locations that have traditionally hosted telephone booths, but stations are also appearing in new kinds of locations such as libraries, cafés, and trains. Phone booths have been slowly disappearing since the advent of the mobile phone in 1973.
Vandalism
A rise in vandalism has prompted several companies to manufacture simpler booths with extremely durable pay phones.
Dual currencies
Most telephone booths in Northern Ireland are able to accept two currencies:
Pound sterling
Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound ( sign: £) is the main unit of sterling, and t ...
and
Euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
coins, due to the proximity to the Republic of Ireland. Similarly, mainly in large cities in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
, certain telephone booths accept both sterling and euro. Other services provided by these booths are internet access,
SMS
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
text messaging and ordinary phone services.
Most telephone booths in the United States and Canada can accept both American and Canadian 5¢, 10¢, and 25¢ coins, due to their similar size and weight.
Withdrawal of services
Pay phones may still be used by mobile/cellular phone users if their phones become unusable, get stolen, or for other emergency uses. These uses may make the complete disappearance of pay phones in the near future less likely.
Australia
Under the Universal Service Obligation (USO), the Government legally requires telco
Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
to ensure standard phone services and payphones are “reasonably accessible to all people in Australia". Some communities, particularly in remote regional areas, rely on payphones, as well as people who do not have access to a mobile phone.
At their peak in the early 1990s, there were more than 80,000 public phone boxes across the country. By June 30, 2016, according to the
ACMA there were about 24,000 payphones across Australia. On 3 August 2021, with 15,000 public phones remaining across Australia, Telstra announced that all calls to fixed line and mobile phones within Australia from public phones would become free of charge, and that Telstra had no plans to further eliminate public phones.
Belgium
In Belgium, majority state-owned telco
Belgacom
The Proximus Group is a provider of digital services and communication in Belgium and the international markets. In Belgium, its main products and services are offered under the Proximus, Scarlet, and Mobile Vikings brands. The Group is also ac ...
took the last remaining phone booths out of service on 1 June 2015.
Czechia
On 17 June 2021 the last phone booth in Czechia was closed and dismantled.
Denmark
On 13 December 2017 the last three public telephone booths in Denmark had their telephones removed. They were situated in the town of
Aarhus
Aarhus (, , ; officially spelled Århus from 1948 until 1 January 2011) is the second-largest city in Denmark and the seat of Aarhus Municipality. It is located on the eastern shore of Jutland in the Kattegat sea and approximately northwest ...
.
Finland
![Hervanta telephone booth cropped](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Hervanta_telephone_booth_cropped.JPG)
By 2007, Finnet companies and
TeliaSonera
Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in F ...
Finland had discontinued their public telephones, and the last remaining operator
Elisa Oyj
(English trade name Elisa Corporation) is a Finnish telecommunications company founded in 1882. Its previous names were Helsingin Puhelin (until July 2000) and Elisa Communications Oyj (until 2003). Elisa is a telecommunications, ICT and onli ...
did that during the beginning of that year.
France
According to
Orange
Orange most often refers to:
*Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis''
** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower
*Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum
* ...
CEO,
Stéphane Richard, there are only 26 public phone booths
still operating in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
as of 2021. The "
Macron law" of 2015 ended Orange mandatory maintenance of a public phone booth network, its decline in use being caused by the
cell phones
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...
era. These are, by law, maintained in rural area where there is no cell phone service. Consequently they are removed once the area is properly covered by at least one
mobile phone operator
A mobile phone operator, wireless provider, or carrier is a mobile telecommunications company that provides wireless Internet GSM services for mobile device users. The operator gives a SIM card to the customer who inserts it into the mobile dev ...
.
Ireland
Eir
In Norse mythology, Eir (Old Norse: , "protection, help, mercy"Orchard (1997:36).) is a goddess or valkyrie associated with medical skill. Eir is attested in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; th ...
, the Universal Service Obligation carrier with regard to payphones, has been systematically removing payphones which fall under the minimum requirement for retention, of a rolling average of one minute of usage a day over six months
As of June 2019, 456 locations retain payphones (with none in the entirety of
County Leitrim
County Leitrim ( ; gle, Contae Liatroma) is a county in Ireland. It is in the province of Connacht and is part of the Northern and Western Region. It is named after the village of Leitrim. Leitrim County Council is the local authority for the ...
); down from 1320 in March 2014.
Jordan
In 2004,
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
became the first country in the world not to have telephone booths generally available. The mobile/
cellular phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while ...
penetration in that country is so high that telephone booths have hardly been used at all for years. The two private payphone service companies, namely ALO and JPP, closed down, and currently there's no payphone service to speak of.
Norway
The last functioning phone box in Norway was taken out of service in June 2016. However, 100 of the phone boxes have been preserved around the country and are protected under cultural heritage laws.
Sweden
The first telephone booth in Sweden was erected in 1890. In 1981 there were 44,000 of them, but in 2013, there were only 1,200, with a withdrawal of the last one in 2015.
[Telefonkiosken tackar för sig]
A survey showed that in 2013, only 1% of the population in Sweden used one the previous year.
[
]
United Kingdom
The red telephone kiosk is recognised as a British icon.
The telephone company BT is steadily removing public telephone kiosks from the streets of the UK. It is permitted to remove a kiosk without consultation provided that there is another kiosk within walking distance. In other cases, it is required to comply with Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...
rules in consultation with the local authority. Some decommissioned red telephone boxes have been converted for other uses, such as housing small community libraries or automated external defibrillator
An automated external defibrillator (AED) is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation (VF) and pulseless ventricular tachycardia, and is able to treat them thro ...
s.
United States
In 1999, there were approximately 2 million phone booths in the United States. Only 5% of those remained in service by 2018. About a fifth of America's 100,000 remaining pay phones are in New York, according to the FCC
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdictio ...
. However, only 4 phone booths remain in New York City, all on Manhattan's Upper West Side; the rest have been converted into WiFi hotspots. Incoming calls are no longer available, and outgoing calls are now free. In February 2020, the city confirmed that despite a plan to remove dozens of pay phones, the iconic booths would continue to be maintained.
Smoking ban
Following the commencement of the smoking ban in England
A smoking ban in England, making it illegal to smoke in all enclosed work places in England, came into force on 1 July 2007 as a consequence of the Health Act 2006. Similar bans had already been introduced by the rest of the United Kingdom: in Sc ...
in 2007, it became illegal to smoke in red telephone boxes (types K2 to K8), due to these boxes being completely enclosed spaces. The smoking ban requires owners to display no smoking signs, which has resulted in BT displaying a no smoking sticker which refer to the telephone box as "premises". Despite smoking in red telephone boxes being banned, smoking in other telephone boxes remains legal as these boxes are not completely enclosed spaces.
Advertising
Many telephone boxes in the United Kingdom have become locations for advertisements, bearing posters, with the development of "StreetTalk" by JCDecaux
Decaux Group (JCDecaux SA, ) is a multinational corporation based in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, France, known for its bus-stop advertising systems, billboards, public bicycle rental systems, and street furniture. It is the largest outdoor ...
. This is in addition to the ST6 public telephone
The KX series of telephone boxes in the United Kingdom was introduced by BT (British Telecom) in 1985. Following the privatisation of BT in 1984, the company decided to create a newly designed and improved take on the British telephone box, w ...
introduced in 2007 which is designed to feature a phone on one side and a JCDecaux-owned advertising space on the otherside. The advertising pays for the running of the phone.
In 2018, the UK Local Government Association
The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national membership body for local authorities. Its core membership is made up of 339 English councils and the 22 Welsh councils through the Welsh Local Government Association.
The LGA is p ...
drew attention to "Trojan" telephone boxes. These are telephone boxes whose main purpose is advertising. A loophole in planning law allows these to be erected without planning permission and the LGA is seeking to close this loophole.
Replacements for telephone booths
In the final third of the 20th century, pay telephone mounted on walls or kiosks became more common, often replacing older telephone booths.
File:Phone booth in North Carolina.jpg, upPartially enclosed pay phone in North Carolina, typical of many early replacements for telephone booths in the United States, continuing an enclosed space on three sides without the booth.
File:Public Phone Booth - Kashmar (5).JPG, Public telephones in Kashmar
Kashmar () ( fa, کاشمر, also Romanized as ''Kāshmar''; formerly ''Keshmar'', '' Torshīz'' or ''Soltanabad'') is a city and the capital of Kashmar County, in Razavi Khorasan Province, Iran. Kashmar is located near the river Shesh Tara ...
, Iran; such structures replaced earlier booth enclosed telephones late in the 20th century
File:Telephone box with internet access.JPG, Pay telephone with internet access in Münster
Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state distr ...
, Germany. March 2014, still using the old booth format but without a door.
File:ManUsingPhoneBox Footscray.JPG, An example of a person using a Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
phone box in Victoria, Australia; used after telephone booths were phased out.
File:Telstra Payphone (With Internet Access) .jpg, A Telstra
Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 ...
payphone booth in Australia that also serves as a Wi-Fi hotspot to access the internet, an example of a modern pay phone that supplanted the telephone booth.
File:Orelhao ctbc.JPG, Telephone kiosk in Brazil, popularly called '' orelhão'' ("big ear") because of its shape
File:Payphonesonthewall-southkorea-seoul-2019-7-24.jpg, Payphones mounted on a subway wall, South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...
.
In popular culture
*In comic books published by DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery.
DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...
, the telephone booth is occasionally the place where reporter Clark Kent
Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and debuted in the comic book ''Action Comics'' #1 (cover-dated June 1938 and publish ...
discards his street clothing and transforms into the costumed superhero Superman
Superman is a superhero who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, and debuted in the comic book ''Action Comics'' #1 (cover-dated June 1938 and publi ...
. Some of the films and television series featuring the character have also used, referenced, or spoofed this plot device.
*The BBC science-fiction television series ''Doctor Who
''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...
'' features the TARDIS
The TARDIS (; acronym for "Time And Relative Dimension In Space") is a fictional hybrid of the time machine and spacecraft that appears in the British science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and its various spin-offs. Its exterior ap ...
, a time machine disguised as a Mackenzie Trench-style police box
A police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. It was used in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s. Unlike an ordinar ...
(a phone booth used by police).
*'' La cabina'' is a disturbing 1972 Spanish short film about a man trapped in a phone booth. Nobody is able to free him, and the whole booth — with the man still inside — is carted away to a warehouse.
*The 1986 comedy film ''Clockwise
Two-dimensional rotation can occur in two possible directions. Clockwise motion (abbreviated CW) proceeds in the same direction as a clock's hands: from the top to the right, then down and then to the left, and back up to the top. The opposite ...
'' features John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese ( ; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. Emerging from the Cambridge Footlights in the 1960s, he first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and ...
's character vandalising a phone in a booth in frustration after it malfunctions. The scene played on the public perception in Britain at the time that telephone booths were frequently out of order.
*''Phone Booth
A telephone booth, telephone kiosk, telephone call box, telephone box or public call box is a tiny structure furnished with a payphone and designed for a telephone user's convenience; usually the user steps into the booth and closes the booth ...
'' is a 2002 thriller film where a man in a phone booth is targeted by a sniper.
*The Bill and Ted films from 1989 (''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film directed by Stephen Herek and written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. The first installment of the ''Bill & Ted'' franchise, it stars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winte ...
''), 1991 (''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
''Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey'' is a 1991 American science fiction comedy film, and the feature directorial debut of Pete Hewitt. It is the second film in the ''Bill & Ted'' franchise, and a sequel to ''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' (1989). ...
''), and 2020 (''Bill & Ted Face the Music
''Bill & Ted Face the Music'' is a 2020 American science fiction comedy film directed by Dean Parisot and written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. It is the third film in the ''Bill & Ted'' film series, and the sequel to ''Bill & Ted's Bogus J ...
'') set in San Dimas, CA used a phone booth as a means of time travel and transport of historical figures.
*In ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'' is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the fifth novel in the ''Harry Potter'' series. It follows Harry Potter's struggles through his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witc ...
'', Harry and Mr. Weasley enter a London phone booth and dial 62442 (MAGIC). The booth is an elevator used as the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic.
*In the famous opening credits to the 1960s T.V. satire comedy ''Get Smart
''Get Smart'' is an American comedy television series parodying the secret agent genre that had become widely popular in the first half of the 1960s, with the release of the ''James Bond'' films. It was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, an ...
'', Maxwell Smart (played by comedian Don Adams
Donald James Yarmy (April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005), known professionally as Don Adams, was an American actor. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) in the television situation comedy ''Ge ...
), a Bond-like secret agent a.k.a. Agent 86, would go through a corridor, armed with steel doors which would close after his passage, to an American style phone booth in which he would enter, close its door, dial a special number on the rotary dial and, after hanging up, would get lowered into CONTROL's secret offices.
See also
*Callbox
A call box or callbox is a (usually metal) box containing a special-purpose direct line telephone or other telecommunications device which has been used by various industries and institutions as a way for employees or clients at a remote loca ...
*Hotspot (Wi-Fi)
A hotspot is a physical location where people can obtain Internet access, typically using Wi-Fi technology, via a wireless local-area network (WLAN) using a router connected to an Internet service provider.
Public hotspots may be created b ...
*Interactive kiosk
An interactive kiosk is a computer terminal featuring specialized hardware and software that provides access to information and applications for communication, commerce, entertainment, or education.
By 2010, the largest bill pay kiosk network ...
*KX telephone boxes
The KX series of telephone boxes in the United Kingdom was introduced by BT (British Telecom) in 1985. Following the privatisation of BT in 1984, the company decided to create a newly designed and improved take on the British telephone box, w ...
*Mojave phone booth ''Mojave Phone Booth'' is an independently produced 2006 film directed by John Putch. The film is based on a Mojave phone booth, real phone booth in the Mojave Desert that once accepted incoming calls, but has since been removed.
The film is compos ...
* Payphone
*Police box
A police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. It was used in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s. Unlike an ordinar ...
*Red telephone box
The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar.
Despite a reduction in their numbers in recent years, ...
*Giles Gilbert Scott
Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and d ...
, the English architect who designed the iconic red telephone box
*Phonebooth stuffing Five people in a telephone booth
Phonebooth stuffing is a sporadic fad that involves a number of people consecutively entering a telephone booth until either the phonebooth can accommodate no more, or there are no more individuals available. Comp ...
*
References
External links
PayPhoneBox
Index of payphone numbers and photographs of payphones in unusual or famous places around the world.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Telephone Booth
Public phones
Street furniture
Telephone services
Vending machines
1881 introductions