When did you last use one of these? | Hacker News Reader

When did you last use one of these?

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18 pointsstretchwithme33 comments

As a teenager I would spend hours talking to my girlfriend using the payphone that was across the street from my house. Why ? Just to avoid the hyper-sensitive ears of my parents. Those things were an essential part of my life!

That girl became my wife, and now we have a seven-year-old son. Unlike me, he will probably never use one of these. Ever. He'll never have the joy of standing in the rain/cold/wind chatting to his girlfriend from a payphone.

And to that point, I conjecture that he will never have a POTS wired phoneline in his own home, he will never buy a newspaper, and perhaps he will never buy a CD, DVD or petrol-only vehicle.

What do you think ?

This reminds of the ipad ads that have gone up recently in London. They feature a book, with authentic-looking "pages" that you can turn.

I fully expect children in 10 years to be wondering what the hell this graphic/effect is supposed to represent.

So you're saying that in 10 years, there will be no more books in the world?

Even if everyone starts using computers/ipads/whatever to read books, I doubt that all the books in the world would disappear so quickly. I think it will take closer to 50 years.

Interesting. My child is 1.5 years old and perhaps she will never buy any vehicle. "Dad, people actually owned these 20 years ago?" Another example: so far, she has never seen a photo album, but can browse photos on my iPhone.

why would she never buy a vehicle?

Oh. Because things like public transport and City Car Club will take over.

He'll never have the joy of standing in the rain/cold/wind chatting to his girlfriend from a payphone.

He will have other joys. Joys that perhaps you will never have.

he'll never have an answering machine either. nor did we when I was a kid. I seem to recall the phone just ringing and ringing and you had to call back again and again to reach someone. and you never knew who was calling when you picked up the phone

Which reminds me: NEVER, EVER use payphones on airports, especially with you credit card. They don't publish the rates anywhere and rip you off royally, paid close to USD 250 a couple of years back for about 10-15 mins aggregate calls from HK / KL to India.

A couple of weeks ago. Locked my phone in my house along with my keys. I'm glad they're still around; when they're useful, they're very useful.

If you remembered the number to call, I'm seriously surprised. If you remembered the number for number information, I'm also a bit surprised...

I doubt a payphone would be of any use to me without my mobile / laptop - the only number I remember is my mother's - just because she has it since the pre-contactlist times (I learned it because of dialing the digits often).

OTOH - I used a payphone 3 months ago (and before that... many years ago) in another country to avoid roaming charges.

A lot of payphones have the operator either a) printed on the phone body or b) default to 0 (at least in the UK anyway_

They're not even useful for making anonymous calls any more; what with disposable mobiles being so cheap.

I don't remember using a payphone ever, and I'm not that young (born in 1982). Got my first cellphone at age of fifteen (1997). Before that I lived in rural area where payphones didn't exist. Nowadays, when abroad, I prefer Skype over wifi or SMS.

The problem here is that the ones that are left, often only work using calling cards, not with coins. Which completely negates its only purpose left - as an emergency 'I locked myself out of my car/house and need to call for help' apparatus.

When I was at uni I had a calling card, you could type the number in instead of swiping it (most payphones then didn't have card readers). You'd dial the company free-phone number, the card number, the pin and then the number to call. When I called my gf from turkey I remember taking an age to enter the number - about 42 digits, the longest number sequence I've had memorised I think.

Think of all the shoulder surfers at NY Penn Station who have been put out of business!

I remember it clearly. It was the first evening of the Northeast Blackout of 2003 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003] and I was working in NYC.

My wife had gone to her parents, and I wanted to phone her to say that all was well. All the cellphone towers were either without power, or overloaded. But the good old payphones just kept working.

It really is useful that telcos maintained their own power network. I wonder if this is still the case?

I think thats still true. if you have a landline, it will keep working when the power is out, as long as its not cordless

Like a week ago. Batteries of my 2 phones died. And it ate up my ~2 euros connected me for about a second and then just died with a message "Error".

Here in Sweden they've converted some of them to wifi accesspoints, and some got a phone re-installed. I like that, that's clever.

Here in the UK they're often used as public lavatories, whether the phone is working or not

That's clever, too!

I saw a documentary about the UK Police a year or so ago and was interested to see them challenging suspicious-looking people who were using public telephones. Their theory was that most suspicious-looking people have mobile phones these days so if they are using a payphone they are often actively up to no good!

I think I last used one about a decade ago? They still have some use, though, so I hate to see them vanishing as much as they are.

My memory might be faulty and I could be confusing incidents, but I think I might have used one for something connected to that time I called up the guy whose "affiliates" were spamming a site owned by some friends of mine with porn site links and had a little chat with him. The problem stopped after that.

I don't remember, but I keep seeing people using them in London. It's insane that there's people queuing to use payphones in the street in 2010.

Tourists/exchange students etc tend to use them

In parts of London they double as advertising space promoting members of the oldest profession. I wonder if this is related.

I was on an Amtrak train a few months back. Apparently they still advertise that they have payphones on board.

Introduced in 1986: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1986-06-03/business/8602020...

Last year. Was on a remote island with no cell phone reception and there happened to be a pay phone.

April 2, 2010, Jones Gap State Park in Northwest South Carolina. There is no mobile phone service due to the mountains on either side so they keep a pay phone available.

Yesterday, to call someone who has been ignoring my calls.

Here in Switzerland you can send an email for free using terminals that are installed in lot of these booths

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