What's a Phone Booth?

Hmmm...I think it's one of those things that Superman used to change his clothes ...Or what Bill and Ted traveled through time with in order to pick up the deliciously handsome Billy the Kid...Or are phone booths those strange glass enclosed street rooms that people used to stuff with Popes to see how many could fit? No wait...those were Volkswagen's...




AT&T hanging up on pay phones after 129 years
11:03 PM CST on Monday, December 3, 2007
By ANDREW D. SMITH / The Dallas Morning News



America's shrinking pay phone population suffered another blow Monday, when AT&T Inc. announced plans to turn loose its herd of 65,000. As recently as 1998, the U.S. supported 2.6 million pay phones, but with cellphones reducing pay phone use and vandals preying on units in vulnerable locations, pay phone numbers have plummeted to just 1 million today.


If independent pay phone operators do not take over the phones that AT&T abandons, service may decline further in U.S. prisons and across the 13-state footprint where Southwestern Bell once provided telephone service.

The first pay phone appeared back in 1878. To assuage [privacy] concerns, phone companies built elaborate and comfortable phone booths, which were virtually sound tight. These mostly wooden structures were expensive and attracted vandals, but they also attracted enough business to pay for new equipment. Eventually, phone booths became icons of modern life.

Perhaps we can go back to tin can and string.