Once upon a time, there were no cell phones. If you wanted to make a phone call outside your house, you had to find a Pay Phone, which the phone company had installed pretty much everywhere. To make a call, you’d put in a dime (later it was a quarter, unless it was a long distance call, in which case you put in several quarters and you could only talk for 3 minutes.) Then you’d dial your number and talk.
UNLESS you were me. When I was 15 I built a portable Touch-Tone Generator, which made the sounds you normally hear when dialing on a landline phone. (Not many people know this, but it’s the sounds that do the dialing on those old phones.) So if the payphone gave you a dial tone first, all I had to do is hold up the portable Touch Tone Generator’s speaker to the phone’s microphone, and dial the number I wanted. A free phone call! (Yes, it was illegal. Please don’t tell anyone!)
The outside looked nice, but inside was another rat’s nest. There was so little room in there that I had to remove the case of the 9V battery just so I could close the cover.
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| Side view. This was before God invented a computer chip that could do the same thing. :-) |