A Brief History
On August 13, 1889, the coin operated pay phone was patented by William Gray of Connecticut. “It’s your dime” was a common phrase meaning “you make the call, you paid for it” and our greatest superhero, Superman, needed phone booths to change into his Superman suit. Not anymore!
Digging Deeper
Pay phones and phone booths used to be part of the American scene, as recently as the 1980s or the 1990s, but cell phones made them obsolete. Like the Marlboro Man, other bits of Americana largely disappeared, including:
Coin operated kids’ rides outside the front of stores. These were often a running horse, an airplane, or some sort of race car. Why did those disappear? Our guess is civil liability. You can still find them, but rarely, but you could also buy your own!
Cap guns, which have lost favor due to anti-gun hysteria and the demonizing of “toxic masculinity.” These also still exist, but only a fraction of what they used to be.
Question for students (and subscribers) to ponder: Do you miss pay phones?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see..
Grossman, Anna Jane. Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By. Abrams Books, 2009.
Penner, Barbara, et al, Editors. Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects. Reaktion Books, 2021.
