Payphones were infrastructure until they weren't. They weren't missed until they were.
At their peak there were about two and a half million of them in America, one on what felt like every corner, and a dime got you anyone in the country. By 2018 there were about a hundred thousand left, most of them dead. The first one turned up in a Hartford bank in 1889. The last public one in Manhattan left ceremoniously in 2022, with a press release, like a retiring quarterback.
In between, the booth became a cultural object (Superman changed in one, every spy movie needed one). Drug crews turned payphones into open-air offices, so cities pulled the phones out of the neighbourhoods that leaned on them hardest. Then the cell phone showed up and the whole thing fell over in about a decade.
We'd decided a fire hydrant was a public good and a payphone was a business. When the business stopped paying, the phones came down, starting with the corners that could least afford to lose them. Then Katrina knocked out the cell towers, and the payphones still bolted to the wall had lines of people waiting at them. Turns out the thing you last cursed at for eating your quarter was was doing a job you'd written off years ago.

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Tomorrow's episode is on pay phones. A technology that was once essential until mobile phones became ubiquitous. There's a lot of history (and nostalgia) that Marc and Renee love to gab about. So tune in tomorrow for the full episode.

But...you can't talk about pay phones without talking about paying. The scene...small town, unfamiliar territory, sun going down. You need to get out of here and your cousin Susan is the only person that is close enough to come get you. But you have one slightly worn quarter and there's only one pay phone in sight. What ensues is an epic battle of wills. You...anger and determination to call Susan. The pay phone...stoic, unyielding, silent. It won't relent and won't let you dial. Then finally it feels like you'll be able to dial and it steals your quarter. There's never been a more rage-inducing moment.

Lyrics below:

[Verse 1]
I've got to call my cousin
She's the only one for miles who'll come
No shop, no soul, no signal
Just this phone and the going-down sun
One quarter left to my name
Last one, warm in my hand
And the dial tone hums like a promise
Like it finally understands
[Refrain]
Quarter in
Quarter out
It will not hold the line
I just need to call my Susan
One more time
[Verse 2]
I try again, my hand is shaking
There's a click, and then a pause
Then a bell that isn't a bell
I think it caught, so I start to dial
Halfway through her number now
Then the quarter drops right through
And the line goes dead somehow
[Refrain]
Quarter in
Quarter out
It will not hold the line
I just need to call my Susan
One more time
[Bridge]
Then it takes it
Lord, it takes it
And it gives me back a hiss
No tone, no Susan, no operator
Just nothing, only this
You're a thief
You're a quarter thief
And I'm screaming at a box
On an empty road
And the sun going down
[Outro]
Then the cloud breaks
And the cars roll back
And the people on the corner stare
At a grown adult in a standoff
With a phone that doesn't care
I, I just wanted to call Susan

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Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

First things, first. We have merch. Silly, yes, but available here. Now onto the show...

Have you ever pressed your face to the window in a plane as a kid and stared at the wing thinking flying shouldn't work? Have you ever sat in seat 23B with the baby crying five rows up and perfume getting reapplied three rows over and wished for just forty minutes of respite?

Of course you have. Passenger jet aviation is one of the most transformative things humanity has ever built, and most of us experience it as a tube we sit in until we arrive somewhere else. But, it wasn't always the cattle-car experience we have today.

Marc and Renee love aviation and flying and this episode traces that tube from Frank Whittle, the British inventor who patented the jet engine in 1930, to the de Havilland Comet (which kept falling out of the sky because of square windows), to Boeing betting big on a plane nobody asked for, to the Concorde flying Mach 2 over the Atlantic for twenty-seven years while burning fuel like a small country, to the 787 quietly changing what eight hours in a metal tube feels like on your body. Along the way: Juan Trippe deciding ordinary people should be allowed to fly, the 1973 oil crisis rewriting the economics of flight, and the disappointing realisation that the shower on the first-class A380 was never going to be for you.

If you have ever waved a thanks to a flight attendant who couldn't possibly see you, paid four dollars for a small bottle of water at thirty-five thousand feet, or sat through a connection in Charlotte Douglas wondering whether there is some kind of cosmic law requiring every American flight to route through there, this one's for you.

Check out the Mouselets for civil engineering and Disney - https://www.youtube.com/@TheMouselets

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.