The booths that house pay phones have undergone more design
changes than the phones themselves. At the turn of the
century, indoor booths were constructed of durable hardwood,
such as mahogany, with comfort and privacy in mind, and
exhibited detailed craftsmanship. They were often carpeted.
The "original" telephone booth is credited to Thomas Watson,
the man who helped Alexander Graham Bell invent the telephone.
Watson's "booth" was made by draping blankets over the
furniture in his room and crawling underneath to conduct early
telephone experiments. One story says Watson, in order to
hear, was insulating himself from street noises. Another story
is that his landlady ordered Watson to be quieter; his
shouting, albeit for the sake of science, was disturbing other
boarders.
In 1883 Watson designed a real booth. It was built of
expensive wood, had a domed top with a ventilator, windows with
screens, and a desk with pen and ink.
Over the years, telephone booths have reflected their
surroundings as well as the times. There have been phone
booths resembling cable cars in San Francisco, and others
resembling pagodas in New York City's Chinatown district. In
the 1960s, as American architects designed glass-wall office
buildings, wooden phone booths looked out of place in lobbies.
Bell Laboratories designed an indoor glass and metal phone
booth to better fit newer surroundings.
Not all of the designs for phone booths have reached the
market. An experimental "hands-free" booth in 1972 featured a
microphone in front of the caller and a loudspeaker in the
booth's ceiling. Observers noted that people readily tried the
new arrangement but that, conditioned to speaking in the
direction another voice is coming from, they were all shouting
into the ceiling.
