Talk:Payphone

message: Add a history section. I want to know when the payphone was first introduced and when the different styles came out. Also, how those styles worked. I think the sound of the dropped coins used to be recognized by an operator who manually placed the calls in the early days.
What about payphone hacks? Phone phreaks used to use them. 
: Try looking for an article in the IEEE magazine, c. 1990 plus or minus 3 years. Talks about blue, red, and black boxes along with the whistles included in cereal packets that kept disconnecting trunk calls. --Nick4mony (talk) 08:04, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Coin phone lines usually worked on a 'Ground-Start' arrangement until more complex features and options came along later. The grounding referred to above gave the central office equipment the same signal as if you had deposited the basic local rate by coins. It only worked for making a call within the local area because other equipment and system came into play if you attempted to make a non-local call.An805Guy (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 00:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

text: Collect and return worked by simplex DC when I was repairing them in New York decades ago, while coin dedection was by AF filters picking up different tones for each value of coin.  Sources, I don't have, nor do I remember much of the specifics since it was only a small part of my job.  Jim.henderson (talk) 05:18, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Yank history

message: Too many pictures.  Rather than gallerize, I'd like to nominate for deletion the Toronto, California, and Verizon photos as ugly or uninformative or poor in quality.  Jim.henderson (talk) 04:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Picture clutter

message: This happened to me,
:Interstate 2 minute credit card call $24
:Interstate 2 minute collect call     $44 including all the taxes
I had no idea the charges would be this high until I got the bills. It seems that this is a good place to warn people, but since I am the source, I thought I would post here first. Robert - Northern VA (talk) 07:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I sympathise, but Wikipedia is not a place for user experiences, unless it becomes notable because of media exposure (even then, a 3rd party should write it up in a neutral manner). May I suggest Slashdot, the US version of Whirlpool (if any) or similar?. Of course, you may seek out the payphone company's rate sheet, and provide an example (cite the rate sheet using <ref>). --Nick4mony (talk) 04:21, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  US Interstate Charges 

message: In the film Damn Yankees, set in the 1950s, Mr. Applegate (who happens to be The Devil) calls "home" from a pay phone, and appropriately has to deposit an ungodly number of quarters for the connection. WHPratt (talk) 12:34, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: In Popular Culture 

message: :Telstra has made a security move with most of their payphones, ensuring that money, including change, cannot be retrieved from the machine without opening the cashbox.
For retrieving change, I don't believe it. The coins drop into a refund slot.
===Clarification===
The payphones don't give change, as such, but will give back unused coins (the most common case being you call a number but it doesn't answer).
So if you put in a 50c coin, and the number doesn't answer, you get it back. But if you put in a $1 coin, you can make two local calls (use follow-on button), but you only get your coin back if neither call was answered.  --Nick4mony (talk) 04:55, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australia - retrieving your change 

message: The payphones don't give change, as such, but will give back unused coins (the most common case being you call a number but it doesn't answer).
So if you put in a 50c coin, and the number doesn't answer, you get it back. But if you put in a $1 coin, you can make two local calls (use follow-on button), but you only get your coin back if neither call was answered.  --Nick4mony (talk) 04:55, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Clarification

message: I will attempt to prod them into a fix (either to the actual payphones or their T&Cs), for various toll-free calls. It's a bit inconsistent, as shown below.
Call type              	Dialled prefix	Tritel charge
Domestic toll-free     	1800...       	50c/15min
Short numbers          	1802...       	
International toll-free	0011 800...   	$2.00 (per minute?)
Dial Before You Dig    	1100          	$1.00
Telecards              	189xy         	
The payphone cuts out with a tone after dialling digits 189 (eg 18918) and 1802 (eg 1802007 - the swine flu hotline).
--Nick4mony (talk) 07:55, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Australia - Tritel to toll-free 

message: Payphone, Red telephone box and Telephone booth are all much the same, so I suggest the articles be merged.  If we are to have several  articles, I think it would be better to split them on national lines because there are differences between countries. Biscuittin (talk) 16:50, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Payphone is the general principle - whether in a box by the roadside or on the wall in a restaurant beside a fistful of business cards from local taxi firms. A telephone booth/box is a specific setting for a payphone and the red telephone box is a specific example of a telephone booth (box). Similar progression from vehicle - automobile - Ford Escort. I don't think a merge would be constructive. GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a lot of overlap between the three articles and then there are Public telephone, Public telephone (disambiguation), Callbox, Emergency telephone and Police box.  I think a tidy up is needed. Biscuittin (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I have done some tidying up on this article and expanded the disambiguation pages.  I think it now looks better but please say if you have any suggestions for improvements. Biscuittin (talk) 19:32, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

text: Some of the articles are about telephones that exist for specific purposes; others are about the structures that contain the equipment. I had expected Call box and Telephone booth to be about the same topic, but "call box" seems to be about something more specific in the United States. Peter E. James (talk) 01:17, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: It would be interesting to see more information about the history of payphones in Europe. 
Also, when did the term for these devices become a single word? I can recall times when they were referred to as "pay phones," and it was two words instead of one.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Regayov (talk • contribs) 14:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  More history of Payphones in Europe? History of the term? 

message: Neither this article nor Red telephone box covers the equipment used in the UK. There's a nice video clip here of Ernest Marples launching a new type in 1958. I can remember many examples of the previous Button A / Button B type in the 1960s so I'd guess it was 10 years or more before the new type became predominant. Then phonecards came along... --Cavrdg (talk) 07:58, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: UK Equipment

message: The photos in this article, grouped into one single section, should be organised throughout the sections of the article. I find, however, that this might be difficult for some of the specific images. Qxukhgiels (talk) 00:25, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organisation of photos 

message: William Gray
*http://www.telephonearchive.com/phones/makers/gray.html
*http://time.com/4425102/public-telephone-booth-history
*https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-and-last-pay-phone-180952727
--evrik (talk) 20:33, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gray Telephone Pay Station Company  

message: Please add information under a heading as captioned for this Topic... For people familiar with the book series, a pay telephone will make them think of the job "telephone sanitizer"... I used Google and found the following related reference...  Use the web browser "Find Text" command to find "telephone"  https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/06/stray-thoughts-louis-armstrong-telephone-sanitizers-angry-jungians 173.18.81.80 (talk) 01:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  UK -  In popular culture - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy