Gile Gilbert Scott, the English architect who designed the red telephone box, was born on the 9th November 1880. Google celebrated this with a fancy remake of its own icon.
Screenshots
Archer 
Archer
Line of Dury 
Line of Duty
Waking the Dead
Cairngorms National Park, Scotland
“Coins Not Accepted Here” 
Personalised phone booth
Unexpectedly came across this when on the way to the beach…
Some things can’t be replicated
‘Thames Town’, is a town in China that is replica of perceived UK architecture. It naturally includes an iconic red box. Frankie Boyle, in ‘New World Order’, noted that to make it more authentic someone would have to piss in the phonebox. Sad but true.
Screenshots
Agatha Raisin (S3) 
Archer 
Predestination 
Orange is the New Black (S5)
The Umbrella Academy 
Archer
A couple of more interesting elements were introduced in ‘Waking the Dead’ episode, in one episode (S6) a character is assulted in a phone box with a psychedelic compound made with woad and another (S5) where a man is murdered while making a call…
And in ‘Upload’, the design for the digitial after life still includes a phone booth…
Face the Music
‘Bill and Ted: Face the Music’ opened recently and the phone booth still plays a vital role as a time machine, in the quest to save the universe. (An updated time machine, now in the shape of a cocoon, is utilised by daughters, Thea and Billie.)
Screenshots: Lockdown viewing
(good Aussie comedy/drama, making me a little homesick)
Online exhibition celebrates telephones in literature
I thought that my blog would become somewhat irrelevant over the years, as focusing on a piece of technology of the past would mainly be of interest to social historians. Yet our collected response to Covid-19 has proved me wrong. Communication is still a key feature of the make up of human beings. We all need to connect to someone. Yes, the technology has changed, but it’s still technology being put to the same use – to maintain contact.
A current online exhibition seems to prove my point. Click here for more:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/nov/17/milkman-to-mark-twain-online-exhibition-celebrates-telephones-in-literature
“They can be objects of romance or harbingers of doom. They can provide plot twists, shocks, horror, comedy or character. Now the role of the telephone in literature, from the 19th century to the present day, is being celebrated in an online exhibition, Crossed Lines.
Readers of books, plays and poems were invited to send in their favourite references to telephones in literature, and almost 100 examples, from the earliest models to smartphones, were submitted from across the world…”
(from The Guardian)
Comments Off on Online exhibition celebrates telephones in literature
Posted in Comment, News
Tagged literature