Spotted this new-to-me old Telephone EXchange Name number today: LO-8-6700. In NYC “LO” stood for “LOngacre,” and I thought that might be true for Englewood as well. But according to the Telephone EXchange Name Project in Englewood “LO” stood for “LOwell.” I found a few references to “Charles Brucker and Sons” and “Charles Brucker” at…
It's not that mailboxes are vanishing. Instead we are losing distinct stamps of age that showed how some humble little USPS dropboxes had been in place since the Eisenhower administration.
The advertisement below appeared in the August 6, 1957, edition the Panama City News-Herald. It appeared in numerous publications nationwide. Cutesy ads like this promoted the expansion of Bell telephone booths throughout the 1950s. doggone… “It’s a dog’s life, all right. Waiting while she talks. Can’t blame her much, though. Those new outdoor phone booths…
I did a short interview yesterday with Channel 9, an NBC affiliate in Denver, on the occasion of anniversary of the pay telephone. Allegedly the first pay station appeared in New Haven, CT, on June 1, 1880. Certain evidence, however, suggests earlier pay stations had existed.
An abandoned payphone in Queens bears an interesting notice which claims that the phone is marked with something called "Tracekit", a permanent tracing system used by law enforcement. Did Tracekit really exist?
Once in a while in my research a charming cultural relic surfaces, such as this peppy New York Telephone commercial from 1987. This 60-second television spot shows several actors recreating real-world scenes of people using payphones in ways once common in New York.
Pundits and techies pounced on the appearance of a flip phone in the video for Adele’s latest song “Hello”, calling it all kinds of ridiculous. According to director Xavier Dolan, however, it is the grizzled, overgrown British K2 phone box which appears later in the video that has far more significance.
Even if you actually wanted to make a call from this payphone it would be very difficult to communicate with another human. Audio coming through the earpiece of this landline payphone (718-424-2798) at 82nd Place & 63rd Avenue in Queens was completely subsumed by the sound of Radio Disney. These unintended analogue overlaps, reminiscent of…
Earlier this year John Porter (of East Harlem Unity Communications) and I appeared in “Hang Up” – a payphone documentary directed by French film maker Ugo Massa. The short film premiered at “The Auditorium” on May 27, opening the “Truth Be Told Festival” at The New School. The film is not yet available to the…
What was the connection between chronographs and payphones? Find out at WristTimes.com.
A poem by Jax Leck.
It's a commercial for pants -- Dockers pants -- which contains some nice imagery of abandoned phone booths from around the world. I like it, even with the droll punchline at the end. Check it out.
Here is a cool gift idea for the payphone enthusiast in your life, or for anyone with an interest in telephone nostalgia. I picked this book up a couple of years ago and check in on it once in a while if only to remind myself how interesting and even exciting the world of payphonery…
Back in March of 2010 I commenced a collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. Like my interest in payphones, the exchange name sightings was another paean to telephone nostalgia in which I gathered photos and other relics of a faded era in telephony. Recently a friend, Ivy Nguyen, sent over this nice photo of an…
Here is my latest paean to telephone nostalgia: My collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. You don’t see too many of these in the wild any more, but if you keep your eyes open (and if you know what you are looking at) then you might find them. I first noticed these old phone numbers…
A look at WFMU.org, the web site of WFMU, shows that dial-up Internet users will not be able to access archived version of the freeform station’s programming starting next month: Beginning July 12th, WFMU’s new archives will no longer be available in 20k Real Audio, and this change will affect archive listeners on a dial-up…
I landed on this product web site through the Random Yahoo Link. This “laser turntable” presents an interesting solution to hearing and enjoying aging LP record collections without jeopardizing their surface. At a cost of $10,990 US I do not anticipate adding the ELP Laser Turntable to my personal arsenal of audio archiving tools. It…
A New York Times City Room Blog entry points us to a payphone enclosure which still bore vestiges of the Bell Atlantic brand — a brand which was supposed to have been retired by 2002. I know it is just a blog and not real news but I was surprised that the Times seemed to…
The pay-phone maintenance man is cited as an example of a job that will eventually disappear. The maintenance man quoted in this story offers this insight into the state of the payphone business: “‘There is a large section of society, the have-nots, who use pay phones,’ he said. And pay phones can be essential…
“While the number of wireless-only households is increasing — close to 6 percent of all U.S. homes at the end of last year, according to Forrester Research Inc. — the trend isn’t accelerating as quickly as many experts predicted. And some consumers are reconsidering their decision to go wireless and are reconnecting to a landline.”…