Public phone life

This post is inspired by Hel who wrote this most interesting post about the history of the classic red English phone box and other models, or perhaps that is the UK.

So, let's have a look at public phones in Australia that lie in my memory.

This is the first oldest public phone I can remember. On the horizontal part, you can just see a half round circle and you sat your sixpence or five cents there, and when the phone was answered at the other end, you would push your coin to the left and it would roll and drop down into the phone.

This is not a public phone but some of the above had separate earpieces and fixed mouth pieces similar to what is in the candlestick phone below. I don't remember there being much in the way of vandalism as everyone used them at time, and wanted them to work. 

This model became quite standard in my younger years.  Five cents would be inserted into the slot at the top and when the call was answered, you pressed button A. Button B was to retrieve your coin if the call wasn't answered. As kids we often just pressed button B to see if anyone had left a coin in the phone but I can't remember if we ever found any. It was common knowledge that if you yelled into the ear piece, the person at the other end could faintly hear you, enough to say 'Pick me  up', if there was an arrangement in place. I don't remember if that worked either. Sometimes just calling without using a coin was sufficient. My grandmother called her home and the phone ringing alerted my grandfather to drive to pick her up from church.  It's a wonder you could get a dial tone without inserting a coin. 

So what housed these important machines? It was an English style classic red phone box, of various styles. This one has panes of glass but I remember some at least, having louvred windows, which I guess let in external noise. This was taken at the National Communications Museum in the suburb of Hawthorn. It's well worth a visit.

I assume the paint used inside was to stop people writing on the walls. I can imagine people scribbling a  phone number on a wall that they needed to remember. It could have also been for insulation the boxes from external noise too. They had a very dead sound inside and with the door shut, very little noise penetrating. 

Now, I wonder if there is a gap in my knowledge. These are the next public phones I can remember. They were virtually vandal proof, with the very inconveniently short metal cord.

                                               

With a closing door, these boxes weren't too bad.

But clearly vandalism was becoming a big problem, with this version minus the door and with a metal grill around the bottom of the box, rather than glass.

Indoors, you would see phones more like these.

What do we have now? These very modest affairs. The pink topped one indicates free WiFi, which was originally only for Telstra customers, of which I was then one. In days before apps, how did the system know you were a Telstra customer? 

At one point as usage fell by 2020s, all calls within Australia to fixed phones and mobiles became free from public phones, so no complicated machinery for coins or bank cards were needed, no risk of coin theft.

Many are now covered in advertising, electronic at times. 

I suppose these phone cards are from the nineties into the two thousands, and before you could use a bank card. Kosov loved the Australian dinosaur card. The two lower cards have punch holes in them, made by the phone as you used your stored value card. I've heard since that you could put tape over the holes and whatever detected the holes saw the card as unused. The two top cards were later when a circuit was printed on the card, so no more punch holes.

Of extra interest to note, the lower right has the name Telecom, which followed the earlier PMG, Post-Master General's, the title for our government postal and phone company. Without fuss or fanfare, Telecom became Telstra, as seen in the left hand card.