A wood phone booth
From Ephemeral New York, a wood phone booth , complete with phone, in a bar on St. Marks Place.
Giant telephone
From Life magazine.
From the dowdy world
PAYPHONE.
An EXchange name sighting
From Pitfall (dir. Andre de Toth, 1948), an exchange name in a telegram.
Land O’Lines
Roger Cohen and Virginia Heffernan on the landline.
It’s ringing
“The expectation of pickup was what made phones a synchronous medium.”
Henry booths
Fun with phone booths.
They’re back
British phone booths, repurposed in imaginative ways.
MU
MUrray Hill-Seven Seven-Five-Hundred. MUrray Hill-Seven Seven-Five-Hundred.
“Telephone Inside”
It must be in the dowdy world, not the future, because the telephone booth still has a telephone.
The return of the phone booth, sort of
The New York Times reports on the return of the phone booth, sort of — phone-booth-like structures that afford privacy in open-floor workplace.
Subway payphone, 1932
Ephemeral New York shows us what a New York City subway payphone looked like in 1932 .
Hours of outage
“Please enter the ten-digit telephone number you are calling in reference to.”
Still life with telephone
Yes, that phone is about to ring.
An EXchange name on screen
Also vertical files, wooden file trays, &c. From Armored Car Robbery.
“Fo-wer, fi-yiv, sev-ven, ni-yen”
From Gay Talese’s New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey.
Dowdy-world miracle
Talking on the telephone. From Beverly Cleary’s Fifteen.
Telephone booths
A Life photo, 1961.
Recently updated
Another excerpt from the 1962 pamphlet manifesto of the Anti-Digit Dialing League.
Phones Are For People
I am now the proud custodian of a copy of the Anti-Digit Dialing League’s pamphlet manifesto Phones Are For People (1962).
Phone manners
From the 1940 New York City telephone directories. Pictures show best, fair, and poor distances between mouth and mouthpiece.
The Anti-Digit Dialing League
A short-lived movement that arose in 1962 that opposed “creeping numeralism” and fought a losing battle to preserve the use of telephone exchange names.
Mail chutes and phone booths
Diane Schirf writes about “relics.”
Virignia Heffernan on the telephone
The disappearing analog telephone call
Wooden phone booths
Long may they stand.
Orange telephone art
Retro telephone, orange
Telephone exchange names on screen
CHelsea, from The Dark Corner (1946)
And then there were four
Outdoor phone booths in Manhattan
Mary Printz, 1923-2009
Obituary for telephone operator who inspired the musical Bells Are Ringing
How to make friends by Telephone
Guidelines for the telephone user