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Old 11th May 2020, 3:41 pm   #1
Martin Bush
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Default Oxford phone booth fun

Hi all

Just spotted this story, which I thought you would be interested in: https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/18...users-no-good/

What was special about the handset of the phones in Oxford?

Martin
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Old 11th May 2020, 4:10 pm   #2
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

According to the article, nothing. The special situation was lots of students!
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Old 11th May 2020, 4:23 pm   #3
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

It doesn't actually say when this was done - just that they interviewed Bert Woods in 1979 about his first "catch" when he was a trainee engineer.

But yes - no idea why this was something odd or peculiar about Oxford. Maybe it just circulated through the Student body, and hence there was a spate of handset thefts.

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Old 11th May 2020, 4:32 pm   #4
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Not sure if there was anything special about the handset. Maybe there was something special about the undergraduates who worked out how to use them in radios ? Or were more than usually inclined to theft ?

When I was there it was quite common practice to get your family (you phoned home every week, of course) to call the phone box nearest to where you were living. You were a skint student and they weren't, after all. You did have to be there waiting, of course. And particularly so if you'd arranged to 'accept' a reverse-charged call from them . I was told more than once that this was impossible because BT recognised call box numbers and wouldn't allow reverse-charging. But I once saw with my own eyes a friend pull the trick off. So I know it could be done.

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 11th May 2020, 4:50 pm   #5
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

We used to lose quite a lot of Telephone handsets on the Motorway in the early/Mid 80's I looked after about 100 miles including the M3 M27 and A3M and would loose around 5 a month sometimes as many in a day.

They were in demand since it had become fashionable to use them for Cuing on Disco Decks, no idea why headphones worked much better.

Cheers

Mike T
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Old 11th May 2020, 7:32 pm   #6
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

There is one tale of a seriously good telephone prank in R V Jones' autobiography. If you're going to get pranked, wouldn't you just prefer it to be by someone of that calibre?

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Old 11th May 2020, 8:03 pm   #7
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig Sawyers View Post
It doesn't actually say when this was done - just that they interviewed Bert Woods in 1979 about his first "catch" when he was a trainee engineer.

But yes - no idea why this was something odd or peculiar about Oxford. Maybe it just circulated through the Student body, and hence there was a spate of handset thefts.
Sadly this style of journalism is standard practice in the OM nowadays (and presumably in the other Newsquest titles too). Somebody spends a few minutes leafing through the archives and sees if they can find some vaguely interesting story to revisit. Often there's no explanation of the details or context, and you often get the impression that the 2020 journalist is completely unfamiliar with the subject.

RAJ Earl published "The Development of the Telephone in Oxford, 1877-1977" in 1978 so the original news story may have been something to do with the publicity for that. Bert Wood was interviewed for the book and receives a credit. Earl was an engineer at the main Oxford exchange in Speedwell Street and was curator of the museum there, now long gone. The exchange was huge with its own cafeteria and bar, but is now completely unmanned. (The tiny oblongs on the edge of Speedwell Street in the attached photo are in fact double decker buses).

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Old 11th May 2020, 9:04 pm   #8
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

The article suggests that students were stealing telephone handsets to make wireless sets. That does seem a bit bizarre.

I have heard about drunken students taking bits of street furniture as drinking trophies - things like road signs and those flashing lights seen around roadworks. There was also a craze of people stealing the VW badges from Volkswagen cars after an American pop group appeared in a music video wearing them.

It's a shame the telephone museum is gone now - I would have liked to visit.

As for reverse charge calls, the electronic payphones added a two-tone beep to the line (it sounded like cuckoo ... cuckoo ... repeated) when you called the operator or received an incoming call. BT operators were trained to recognise the 'cuckoo' tone from the payphone and thus would not allow a reverse-charge call to be received on it. International operators didn't always know about the payphone identification tone - I think that was the loophole. Some payphones did not allow any incoming calls. In one of my payphone instruction books, it mentions that on request BT could arrange to block all incoming calls to prevent any international reverse charge calls getting through. I'm not sure how it worked with the old pay-on-answer or A/B phones - they didn't have the cuckoo tone.
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Old 11th May 2020, 9:10 pm   #9
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Payphone numbers once had an X at the end of the number. For example 4567X. It was hoped that someone seeking to make a reverse charge call to a payphone would ask for 4567X alerting the operator to the fact that the destination was a payphone.
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Old 11th May 2020, 9:14 pm   #10
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

As a student in the 1970s the payphone in our hall-of-residence happily accepted reverse-charge calls from parents: there was a well-established protocol.

You pre-agreed with parents the likely time for an evening chat [to within 5 minutes or so, on a specified day].

if the phone-box was unused you phoned them but hung up after a few rings [so you didn't put any money in]

They then called you back reverse-charge.

[Later, I got access to the OTC's Pye C12 and my brother back at home had a C11/R210. You don't pay phone-charges when you have HF radio!]
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Old 11th May 2020, 9:17 pm   #11
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Given that Bert was talking about the events of 50 years ago in 1979, presumably he was referring to students nicking receivers to use with crystal sets. Remember, that was the Brideshead Revisited era.
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Old 11th May 2020, 9:42 pm   #12
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Quote:
Originally Posted by hamid_1 View Post
... I have heard about drunken students taking bits of street furniture as drinking trophies ...
My college's rugby club perpetrated a fairly epic amateur diversion scheme at one point. They spent several months and travelled some distance to collect the full set of signs, cones, lamps etc needed for the job, which they set up in the small hours of a Sunday morning. A surprising number of vehicles ended up stuck in Radcliffe Square with the earliest victims led up Brasenose Lane, which involved removing the gate to the east end of that but sadly, for them, not the one at the west end.

But, ironically, this is heading well OT ...

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 11th May 2020, 9:47 pm   #13
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Indeed. Back on topic please.
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Old 12th May 2020, 12:43 am   #14
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Much easier when I was of an age for infantile pranks. Unscrew the earpiece and remove the diaphragm. It was much more of a nuisance then as people were more dependant on public phones than they are now.
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Old 12th May 2020, 8:19 am   #15
Craig Sawyers
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

In 1974, while courting my girlfriend (now wife of 42 years) I discovered two phone box ruses.

The first was to tap the number out on the cradle, which bypassed the payment mechanism. The second was to dial normally, but when the receiver was picked up immediately tap the cradle once. That also locked out the payment mechanism.

No idea how I found out those naughty tricks to avoid feeding in a massive pile of 2p coins.

Craig
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Old 12th May 2020, 8:38 am   #16
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Default Re: Oxford phone booth fun

Time to cut this call of!
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