What happens to old phones

[SeanB]

Ever wonder what became of all those old payphones that were seemingly everywhere before cellphones became popular?

This is where some landed up.

[SeanB]

A few more sad photos. All in all a good amount of money being broken up for the scrap value of the cases and the steel inside.

some were even late models that used a cellular connection to do the call link, and all had 6V batteries inside for backup, along with the large supercaps ( 0.47F 5.5V) to keep the microprocessor memory and clock, along with the rate tables to calculate the call charges for the display.

[steve30]

Is that your back garden Sean? 

Where there many payphones that use cellular networks? I sometimes wonder why more payphones don't use that.

[SeanB]

No, my local scrapyard. they have the tender to scrap them, so sadly I could not talk them out of an intact unit to keep on display. Not that any were left intact when they were dumped off of a truck with a scrap grab.

[MJLorton]

Gone the way of the tickey box (https://haaibosidecar.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/img_20140712_150621.jpg)
...what a pity you could not get your hands on one still intact....

[SeanB]

I still have my old party line phone that was made in 1939 by Ericcson. that still works and as in use as the phone in my room. 70 odd years later and it still complies with the requirements of the POTS lines aside from not being able to dial out as it has a hand crank instead of a rotary dial. Also still have a dial phone though, made by STC.

[steve30]

Gone the way of the tickey box (https://haaibosidecar.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/img_20140712_150621.jpg)
...what a pity you could not get your hands on one still intact....

I'm guessing after a quick bit of googling, that that is a telephone box?

Good on you Sean for having some old phones in use. I only have modern phones here, but I'd like to get something old(ish) like a GPO 746. They look neat. It might not be of much use though as I do rely on my caller display and DTMF tones.

Do America and South Africa still have many payphones? Here in England there aren't as many as there used to be, but you can still usually find one every mile or so.

[SeanB]

No, they are becoming rarer than rocking horse apples. Most have gone, and they are only seen in a few places like around a post office and such, and even there the numbers are reduced to less than half.

[MJLorton]

"I'm guessing after a quick bit of googling, that that is a telephone box?"

Yup...it's what the old South African telephone boxes looked like. I was hoping to find a picture of one that was in better shape with the pay phone inside...even if it was an old pic...no joy...

Sean, please post a picture of your old phone.

[SeanB]

Took one today. I am not going to open it to show inside, though it is still mostly original, with only 2 capacitors having been changed over the decades. They are dated 1956, so are pretty good for their age. The phone itself was made in 1939 by Ericsson according to the dates inside.

I did modify it from local battery operation to loop power to get it to work with the phone line, and scrounged a replacement knob for the press switch as the original was missing. Not quite correct but fits.

[MJLorton]

Classic, thanks for posting.

[SeanB]

Well, went back to the yard and got some of the boards, only for the supercaps on board of them. Took them off, and tried them out by charging up to 5V, then leaving them lying around to see just how long they take to self discharge. After an hour they were all sitting at around 4V2 or so, which is not bad for them only being charged the rough and ready method of using the PSU set to 5V and 0.3A to do a quick charge until the PSU read zero current.

Want to use them as backup batteries in my radio, as I want to stop having to use 2 AA cells to keep the clock and memory running. Will grab a LDO out of the phone boards to do the drop from 5v to 3v, so that it will run for a while from the supercap charge.

I got 2 varieties of board, some have a crypto processor on them as well for secure communications, not something I would have thought of being used on a POTS phone, but then again as many were Chatterboxes and were opened by non telco persons to get the money inside ( used in shops and such) I would guess they wanted them secure so noone could either change the rates and so skim money, or make free calls and leave the telco with the cost, as that has been a big issue here.