Invention of the Telephone Booth and History of Its Further Improvements

A telephone booth is the booth with a payphone inside which designed for people in the public to make the call which is very convenient for people who don't have the phone. Some part of the Canada weren't used telephone booth for making call but it usually use as a structure. In the other hand, United Kingdom and Australia usually use telephones box for making call.

Moreover, Their telephone booth provided the privacy function. When someone are making call, the light will on to let the people know that the booth are in use. The telephone booth can be decorated by 'printed directory' which is the paper the containing the telephone number such as hotel number. An outside of the booth are made of metal and plastic in order to withstand with the weather changes and the heavy use from someone. For the indoor booth, the decoration in very delicate which need someone like architecture to design and decorate and we can see the logo and name of the customer service provider.

For the history before the telephone booth was invented, in 1876, which is the year that the telephone was invented but the first services is mainly for the people who quite rich to make the private call. At first the people who has their own phone need to buy the service packages for every month in order to make private call. And as the invention of the telephone grew up, Sheldon Hochheiser who is the coorporate historian at AT&T said that people were tried to find the way to make the telephone exchange that can connect to other through operator which is for the people who don't have their own phone.

The earliest commercial telephone exchange were located in between the bridgeport and Black Rock,Conn. in 1878 which is the year that the inventor name 'Thomas Doolittle' was the person who make the reuse of telegraph wire and installed them between the two towns which he put the telephone to each wire and make them all in the wooden booths and people had to pay the money before making a call which is about 15 cents each. They can make the individual call which can connect to the phone.

The first proper telephone cabinet was pretented in 1883 which install to the place like high class hotel and in 1889 there were the solution to clear this problem by making the telephone booth and install in the public which use coin to operate in the bank in Hartdord, Conn. which created by a person named 'William Gray' who was invented the protector for baseball players. This was the first machine that collect the coin before making call which can use for every kind of people.

According to the history, in 1930 the 'Gray Telephone pay Station' company which is the Willian Gray company were exist after he died. In 1888, his wife was sick and need to carry her to a doctor as fast as he can but he realized that he doesn't has a phone in his house so the thing that he did is to went down to the nearest place that he thought that it suppose to have a phone for him and he found it in a factory down the street but he has been refuse to use the phone due to the fact that he is not a subscriber but after he explained why he need to use that phone so the factory later allow it to him.

He kept this experience and think that is there anyway that to allow people who don't have their own phone in house making the call without paying the money for the monthly subscribtion. So he came up with the model and submitted a patent application in 1888 and this model make the patent for his device then he form the 'Gray Telephone Pay Station Company' to make the improvement of this model by the help of George long who was an inventor.

The idea that were thought by gray has been called crowning invention which is very famous for phone invention and it become to the business and household necessity because it allow people to use the public phone without paying for a monthly subscribtion by only insert the coin. The earliest coin operated telephone booth were included gray idea which all the telephone boot got the operator and the think that operator do is to tell the people that how much coin that they have to deposit to make a call and the operator determine the amount of inserted coin by look at the sound of the coin that his the bell inside the slot. In 1909, they develop the coin insert system they saw the problem that sometimes they inserted too much of the coin and not make long enough call so in that case as usual the booth will not return the excess coin by they change it to be the booth that can return the coin. In 1911, the model 50A coin were operated as public telephone which take care by the company 'Gray founded' and 'Western electric' which include of many feature and you can found amount 25,000 of the model in New York city and they also installed on subway platforms so before they install the telephone booth they have to think that which place is appropriate to install, is it the place that many people pass.

The first entrance of the public outdoor telephone booth were in the early of 1900s which became the commonplace in 1950s and they change material from wood which is difficult to maintain to aluminium and plastic. The design of the payphone was started in 1970s. In many cities of the United State the telephone booth was replace by the one that don't have the door cover. The design come from that they thought about how to make the disable people use the public telephone booth so they come up with the idea to put the door out. In 1990 the telephone booth were started to decline by the Britain due to the popular of the mobile phone.

The paying method before using the telephone booth is to insert coin to the telephone slot and the user of the booth pays for the call by insert the coin into the slot on the telephone. Some telephone deposit from the unsuccessful call will be returned to the user. The call can also paid by the telephone card to by swipe the card to the telephone booth or entering the payment code to the telephone keypad and some booth allow people to use credit card too. For the emergency call, they allowed to make the call for free without paying with coin and credit card.

For the caller who use the service of no charge emergency call, the company operator will call to the one who accept the call and they will ask for the call acceptor the make the payment for the call which is known as 'reversing the charge'. But there were someone who make the thing call 'computer hacking' were hack the telephone booth for use it for free with many tactic to invasion the telephone system.

And now in the present, the telephone booth are use that much by the people because now almost of the people have their own cell phone and it is more convenient than the telephone booth so the people will use it only when they want to make the emergency call.