High-tech payphone concept with free Wi-Fi wins NYC design challenge
The people of New York have spoken. They’ve chosen a spiffy new payphone design with free Wi-Fi access and interactive advertising as the winner of a Reinvent Payphones design challenge…
Is It Time To Commit To Ongoing Payphone Availability?
Public payphones seem headed the way of the dinosaur, as noted here on Slashdot 10 years ago, and again by the CBC earlier this year. Reasons typically cited for their demise are falling usage, (thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone), and rising maintenance costs. But during the recent disaster in NYC caused by Hurricane Sandy public payphones proved their worth…
“Alan Wolfson is a master of the miniature. His urban sculptures are tiny, incredibly detailed views of the mundane city landmarks that urban citizens interact with on a daily basis…”
These models include phone boxes (of course).
Click here for ‘tiny streets’.
Alan Wolfson miniatures
“Take this iconic, life-size cabinet home…”
from insiderchic.net
Giant Touchscreens Coming To NYC Phone Booths
The public pay phone of the future looks like a gigantic iPad. The city plans to unveil 32-inch “smart screens” with Internet connections next month inside 250 old phone booths throughout the five boroughs…
Concept art for the phone box…
“These 12 concept mobile phone telephone booths attempt to recapture the personal isolation those old public phones provided while enhancing the experience of conversing in the city.”
In my artefacts lecture today we had a visit from Bill Sillar. He enlightened us on the origins for the design of the red UK phone box (among many other things). Giles Gilbert Scott based it on the John Soane Mausoleum in St Pancras Old Churchyard.
Soane Mausoleum
source: UCL Dept Earth Sciences
As a class we recently visited LARC where the original architectual model for the red phone box is kept. It’s about 1 metre in height. Annoyingly I didn’t take a camera.
While I photograph phone boxes I have discovered that Cory McAbee (of American Astronaut and Stingray Sam fame) takes photos of urinals.
For a look go to: http://thesmalleststar.blogspot.com/
(update 12/11/15 – can’t find his post on his blog anymore. Ah well.)
I read this great little story in The Fortean Times last night. FT251, July 2009, p.77. Author is Darren Ryden:
“In the 80s a friend of mine decided to go hitchhiking around Europe, and on the way call in on some friends in Italy. After a row at work, he quit his job early and started travelling two weeks earlier than he had originally planned. One night, during a heavy downpour in Germany, he took shelter in a phone kiosk. The telephone rang and, having nothing better to do, he answered it, expecting to hear someone speaking German.
To his suprise, it was our mutual friend in Italy calling to check some arrangement on meeting up. It transpired our Italian friend, not knowing about his early depature, has simply dialled his home phone number and had somehow been connected to that particular public phone.
Our Italian friend phoned me straight after to check that this wasn’t a hoax and that our friend was indeed abroad, which I confirmed. To this day, none of us knows how it happened. Misdial a number and the odds of picking up a particular phone in another country must be infinitesimal.”
Just read about a phone box being turned into a gallery:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8145926.stm
“A group of residents in Settle, North Yorkshire, have turned an old-fashioned phone box into what they claim is one of the world’s smallest art galleries.”