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hpr_transcripts/hpr1364.txt

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+Episode: 1364
+Title: HPR1364: Vintage Tech Iron Pay Phone Coin Box
+Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1364/hpr1364.mp3
+Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:17:12
+
+---
+
+Howdy folks, this is 5150 for Hacker Public Radio, and today I want to...well this is
+a topic I've been kicking around my head for a while to tell you about, but actually
+I was moved off-center bubble by John Culp's diversion into legacy technology with his
+Vectrola. And while you folks don't know about me, I am an avid collector of old
+mechanical banks. Now, not the real-old, very rare these these days, iron
+mechanical banks that start to emerge, I think in 1840s or 1850s, I can't afford
+anything like that. But there was a resurgence in the middle of the last century,
+in the 1950s with reproductions that are quite affordable, and I've got a
+pretty good collection of those, and you know the banks I'm talking about, the
+Uncle Sam, you put the quarter in his hand, and you throw the lever, and the hand
+comes down, the satchel opens up, and he takes your money. Which pretty much the way
+the government works to this day. But I would really like to do a series on
+that on those, but that's really a very, with all the mechanical actions that's a
+very video-oriented series. If I do anything, I'll do it on video, and post the links
+here, maybe maybe with the audio track, but to really see what I'm talking about,
+you'll need to watch the videos. And I've progressed for several types of banks.
+I mean, they're, I really like the mechanical banks, where there's more
+several actions happening at once. There are a lot of banks where there's just one
+thing like they go. Jockey banks or whatever you put, you put the coin in the
+horse's mouth, and you press the switch, and the horse wings up and over the
+fence and drops it in, and we just a single action. That's not very interesting to
+me. I like the ones where there's two or three actions going on at once, and I
+have most of those banks, at least three productions. And the interesting thing,
+one of the reasons I wanted to do the video series on the banks, there's just a
+derth of information on the internet on mechanical bank collecting. They're
+just, there's just nothing out there. It must be a very, very close society. Most
+of stuff I've learned is just by hanging around eBay and finding out where I
+can afford, where I can afford. So I'm hoping when I do go into my series on
+mechanical banks, I can maybe help some folks who are maybe a little lost on
+the subject. Like I said, there, well, there, there were a lot of regional
+mechanical banks, but there was a subset of them that were recreated in the
+1940s in 50s. And most of those that I'm really interested in, I already have.
+And then I expanded out because there, there are various other more modern banks.
+Well, there, there was a lot of stuff in the 1950s that looked like a buck
+Roger spaceships, because see that we were just on the cusp in the late 1950s,
+early 60s of the space program. And there are a lot of these banks, they would
+sell them in toy stores, but most of them went out to kids, opening bank accounts
+for just a couple bucks. And there, you know, there's a whole series of half a
+dozen or more really neat space oriented banks. And I like those because where
+you get those, those are the original thing. They're not a reproduction. And
+then there are several 10 banks. There are, they're very interesting. There are
+calendar banks where you've got to put a penny or nickel in every day to collect
+the calendar over. And then there are other similar banks that I find really
+interesting that are meant to finance a specific goal mainly. Well, a couple
+examples are sewing machines and encyclopedias. Back in the old days, encyclopedias
+were very expensive. You didn't buy the whole set of encyclopedias at once. You
+bought another volume, maybe every two or three months. And I've got some banks
+for like callers and et cetera, that are meant to you, you put your money in
+and it counts your money. And then when it rolls over, you've got the money to
+buy the next volume of your encyclopedias and say, well, I've got ones for
+sewing machines that when you fill the bank up, then you've got enough to buy
+your sewing machine. And then there's a lot, there's a lot of counter banks
+financial litter are meant so that it will only open up a specific amount, say
+$10 or $20 or whatever. Like I said, those are more, those are more modern, but
+they're not reproductions. They're the actual banks. And in the early 1970s,
+oh, these are really neat to me. There was series, at least three different types
+that I have of transistor radio banks. And play the, I mean, it is, is a little
+right, it looks like a jewel box, but you lift the lead and also looks like
+under the lid, it looks like one of these big console systems. You remember what
+your parents or grandparents maybe had that had the TV in the center and then
+you had the high five sets and you had the big speakers on either side. Well,
+it's, it looks kind of like that. So you open up the lid and you drop it a coin
+could be a penny, whatever, but that actually makes a contact to make the radio
+work. And then you, you know, you listen to the transistor radio, what ball
+gains from music or whatever turns you on. And then when you're done listening,
+you press the button and the coin falls through into the coin bank. And you
+know, so you're done till you have another coin. Those are, those are neat. What
+else? Oh, and I've got all kinds of slot machine banks. Most of them not working
+so you could ever pay off. I've got one that would actually pay off as a slot
+machine if you wanted to. But I think a lot of those, I always used to see them
+in the series catalog and wonder why anybody want one back in the toys section.
+But I think a lot of them were to separate people from their money back out
+in Vegas. I mean, somebody's a high roller, you had all these, you know, one
+of bunch of money, you had all these little shops to try to get the money back
+before they left town. And the, the little, sometimes, sometimes battery
+operated, sometimes purely mechanical slot machine banks were one little
+gimmick, sell them something as a moment of their visit. See where they're
+typed? You know, I clock banks. That's another one. Sometimes it's completely
+separate deals a clock and it's a bank. I've got those. But the most interesting
+ones were it's set up to keep the clock running. You have to put in a coin
+every day. I've got a British wood that requires a farthing to keep, to keep
+working every day. Okay. So this is really not getting as any farther along
+the technology I wanted to talk about day though. But this was market on. I bought
+this deal off eBay and it was marketed as the coin box for a pay phone.
+Yeah, you've served me to turn it over probably. And I thought looking at it, this
+is the worst toy pay phone that I've ever seen because it's just a metal box
+with key in the bottom at the top. You've got slots for 25 cents, 10 cents, and
+5 cents. Well, one, it wasn't that terribly expensive. I think I got it for 25
+bucks shipped. So I brought home and then I realized it was, it won the toy. So I
+did some research. Now, the funny thing is, till I had this, I never realized how
+a pay phone actually works. Because I grew up in the day before cell phones. I
+mean when I was a young adult college high school, sometimes I would have to call
+home on a pay phone when I was away from home. And it always puzzled me that the
+pay phone always said, wait for the operator to come online before you put in
+money. I suppose the operator got to deal with it because I, you know, I was used
+to of course, vending machines that you put it electronic and non-electronic
+vending machines. If you put your money in and it would record the money, know how
+much money put in. And I always assume, really, until I bought this thing, oh, four
+years ago, that was how a pay phone worked. But the deal is, you know, that the
+pay phones were set up, you know, pay phones concept came way before a digital
+transmission of information over phone lines. So the cool thing about how
+pay phone actually works. And I think still this day, you know, I bought this
+little box got, you know, heavy. Oh, man, really heavy. It's got, this thing got
+away 15 pounds. But, you know, and still, staff still outside and then cast
+started on the inside. And the folks are following home. These are pictures I
+haven't taken yet. But if you, if you look from the outside, it's this rectangular
+box at the top, you've got like slots, mark 25, 10 and 5. Right below that, there's
+a place, I guess, the slip of card is that would be the phone number or the
+business name or whatever. And then down at the bottom on the front side. And I
+don't have this key. But there, there's a box kind of like a post office box at
+the bottom where the money drawer is. So you take key and remove your money. If
+you flip it over to the backside, you want to picture that too. You will see
+what's going on that below each of those 25, 10 and 5 slots. There are these
+channels, you know, running down and around and around inside the box. And all of
+them, terminating in a bell. It's like the sort of concave bell on an inside
+hotel phone if you were taking one apart. So all these coins would come in and
+strike the inside of this bell. And you can see, once you see this, this is so
+constructed with very, very length tracks that each of these, each of the three
+coins, quarter and diamond nickel are going, when they're dropped in, they're
+going to hit this bell at completely different velocities. And in that way,
+make a different tone. And this is, this is why the operator had to be online
+before you put your coins in. Because there is no digital mechanical interface. It
+says, well, this is, this is how much money the color has dropped in. And then
+brings it up on the screen for the operators. This is, you know, long before such
+things existed. This, the operator was actually trained to know the different
+things, as it were, the different, audible signs of when a quarter or a nickel
+or a dime was dropped into the payphone. And in that way, they could determine
+how much time you got. So if you, if you start dropping your coins in before
+the operator came on, well, there was just no point because the operator had,
+yeah, there was no way of recording how much money you dropped in. Still, the
+parts you may find are remarkable about this device. It may have been sold to me
+as a payphone coin box. But obviously, there's no phone to it. It's just a
+coin box. So I did a little research on old phones, old pay phones. There, there
+is some information on that online. In fact, quite a bit. Oh, I, I tell you what, I
+found out. I would love, you know, to, to put a actual real payphone on my wall.
+Of course, set it up so I don't have to put coins in it to dial out. But they're
+on eBay, mate. You just cannot touch the things. You even modern ones, much less
+finish. Just forget about it. Okay. So, got this box here with the bell. You drop
+the coins in, makes, makes the bell ring at different tones depending on what
+coin you use by looking up online and the original payphones were not set up as
+all one unit. You would have just a regular old wooden crank phone where you pick
+up the receiver and stick it in your ear. And you, you're talking to, crank it up,
+talking to mouthpiece and say, Mabel, connect me to Firefly 2.6. That type of
+phone. But in a public location where they want you to pay for your phone calls,
+you would have a box like this screwed up to in the wall right next to it. And
+when you want to make a long distance call, you would take the receiver and put it up next
+to this box and then, you know, and bring you, of course, break the operator online.
+And then you would drop your coins into it and she would, well, that's on sexist. They
+definitely in those days, they were all female. Drop your coins in and she would hear
+it through the receiver in the part you would pick up off the phone. You just hold it
+next to the box. Because when they would do this, I mean, this, this was an attraction
+back in the days before people had phones in their, in their own house. For businesses,
+this would be attraction to put people to bring people in. So the provider, he would
+get a built-in in the month he would be responsible for paying for all the long distance calls
+and acceptor that came out from his place. And so, of course, he would unlock this
+coin box. Like I said, I don't have a key for it. And from the coins in the coin box,
+pay for those calls and went out through his phone. And he might have had a little left
+over for himself at the end of the month. I rather suspect this is marketed as a tool
+to bring people into your business. So I would, I would bet the average business didn't
+do rather more than break even on the proceeds from their pay phone. Okay. Well, this is
+a little bit of history that, oh, oh, no, let me go on. This box I have is, from the
+example I've seen online, is rather very extremely plain. Most of these pay phone
+calling boxes were extremely ornate. At least the ones I've seen online, the one I've
+seen all, oh, man, I would love to have. But of course, chuck a money in there. If you
+could get it, it, it, it functionally is the same thing. But it's all the, you know,
+the American shield with the eagle. You see, you got the big American eagle and the shield
+in the center and the arrows gripped in the talons. And some place in there, there was
+a place to drop in coins. And just similarly, what I have is just hung on the wall right
+next to a conventional crank up phone. So, and I will apologize if any of this is seen
+a little wondering tonight because I recorded this after the episode two of now you installed
+arched Linux. Now what do I do from a Linux newbie, which in that one I said, well, I
+just recorded that after a dev random. And there's a slight possibility that I might be intoxicated.
+But I hope between this and looking at the pictures that I'm going to take later in post
+to go along with the podcast that you found this either edifying or entertaining. And as
+always, I've been 5150 and you can find my contact information at the bigredswitch.druplegardons.com.
+Thanks for listening. Let's hope tomorrow brings a better podcast than this.
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