When I saw an iconic royal
red British telephone booth in Paris – in someone’s backyard – I wondered
whether telephone booths still exist. The telephone booth – or phone box – was a
public pay booth for making telephone calls. They were positioned in strategic
places around cities in accessible locations.
The most iconic telephone
booths were the prolific red boxes of England, the one in which mild-mannered
Clark Kent changed clothes to become Superman, and the one in the 2002 American
movie Phone Booth where actor Colin
Farrell is held hostage.
The first British
telephone booth, developed by George A. Long, was installed in London in 1903
near the Grand Central Railway. Germany claims to have had the first telephone
booth in Berlin in 1881. The decline started in the 1970s and was most rapid in
the 1990s with the advent of mobile phones. The original telephone booths
required coins, but many of the remaining ones take coins and cards – credit,
debit, pre-paid cards, or swipe-cards.
A survey in Sweden in
2013 found that only 1% of the populations used the telephone booth.
Many telephone booths around
the world removed, while some were replaced with internet booths. In 2003
wireless internet hot-spots and other wireless services used the booths because
they still offered an easily identifiable location and a sense of privacy. And
others are still used as mobile phone charging booths. Superman will have to
find another popular place to change clothes. How inconvenient.
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