Re: What's This Telephone Related Item?

TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Jim Stewart:

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A long time ago, pay telephones did not > accept money as such; they were operated with 'telephone slugs'; at > least the ones in Chicago were.

I'm not sure that's a pay phone token.

I thought tokens were discontinued way way back when Gray's 3-slot phones came out that could take any demonination deposit via 5c, 10c, and 25c coins.

Anyway, on this item the phone appears to be a Trimline, not a Princess, and it appears the date is 198?. There is no Bell System marking at all.

Usually tokens had some marking to indicate their value, ie "good for one city fare" or "good for one phone call". Some systems issued multiple tokens, such as one for local buses and one for expresses or special services. The LIRR used to issue this huge medallion sized token for Belmont Racetrack trains. Phila has adult tokens and school fare tokens. Tokens are being phased out for mag cards.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Walgreens used pay phone slugs until sometime in the 1920's, and the Woolworth and Kresge Five and Ten Cent Stores (today, we know Kresge 5-10 as 'K-Mart') through about the same time, however the one of the two Woolworth stores in downtown Chicago had Gray Pay Station Company phones and phone booths until sometime in the 1960's (although long since taken over by Illinois Bell, via the Chicago Telephone Company), and they were the two-piece instruments with a piece you held up to your ear (brown cloth, not metal and not armored cord) in one hand while you leaned forward to speak into the microphone mouthpiece. I think maybe those were removed by 1960; I cannot honestly remember them after that time, but I remember quite well as an adolescent child going 'downtown' and being fascinated by using those things (1952-54?), but at that time we paid by inserting one dime or two nickles (one nickle alone no longer worked, as the sign on the wall of the phone booth reminded us).

Do you remember when nearby the phone booths there would always be a table with phone directories mounted on it, and a seat with a small reading lamp where you could sit to locate the number you were trying to call? And of course the phone booths themselves were made out of rather elegant wood with a nice brown-stained finish; they all had the little domed ceiling lights, the 'accordion doors with glass in the front which would slide open or closed (turning on the overhead light and the little ceiling fan inside, and the sign on the front of each one announcing 'Public Telephone'.

When my uncle had his Walgreen Agency Drug Store in Whiting in the middle 1950's the store payphone near the front door was similar to those, but the booth had a Genuine Bell style phone in it rather than a Gray Pay Station instrument. PAT]

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hancock4
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