Tank To The Rescue

Published: 1/28/2025

Tank to the rescue, a redesigned armored payphone

by John Stallone

Your mobile phone was the payphone on the corner and they sure got a lot of use and abuse. The three slot payphone was a familiar fixture across the country for nearly 50 years and as common as the quarter in your pocket but things were about to change when a newly redesigned payphone was coming to a corner near you.

Western Electric and Bell Labs completely Re-engineered an entirely new telephone into an armored money making tank. Their hopes were to lower maintenance costs and increase revenue. In 1968 Western Electric debuted the 1A single slot payphone, the phone that we will undoubtedly be remembered fondly for eternity. Payphones are something the younger generation of today will never experience. This new phone was much less susceptible to the outdoor elements and could withstand attacks on intrusion as well as vandalism. The new vault area was reinforced with a new double locking feature that utilized a new lock that the telephone company thought was “Pick Proof”. The new 30A lock developed by engineers at Bell Labs used in conjunction with a 4 point locking system that was similar to what a safe used behind the vault door utilized an additional key. The lock was positioned on the side making it difficult to attempt to pick or drill when the phone was installed inside a booth, there was limited space to work with on the sides, not to mention not easy to see what you were doing. The telephone company thought the new vault was so secure that they increased the size of the “Bank” which is the box that holds the coins so that the collection time wasn’t needed as frequently.

The new payphone had only one slot for coins making it less susceptible to jams and contained a newly designed switch hook with what they thought was a design virtually impossible to jam. Kids and crooks alike quickly realized the old tried and true methods of getting the coins before they were swallowed down into the bank were over. At first they discovered the switch hook could be jammed discreetly due to the fact it was made of hard plastic, but that was short lived until it was discovered on routine repairs. Western Electric went to work and re-cast that item in chrome plated metal and with its new tight clearances was unable to be jammed without someone noticing something was wrong with the phone. The single slot payphone was off to a great start and slowly across the country the old 3 slot work horse was being replaced with the new 1A. The phones were in use for some time before they started to find that the entire bank was empty upon collection. Not knowing how this was possible and with the phone not showing any signs of damage they originally thought people found a hack to make calls without coins (that was next) but it wasn’t that. It turns out that one man discovered a way to pick the pick proof lock and remove the coins and close up the phone like nothing happened. This went on for well over a year and nearly a million dollars went missing in coins with phones being emptied out at rest stops from New York to Michigan. The Telephone Company security agents brought in the local authority’s on the case making sure to keep it as quiet as possible and out of the media so as not to tip off the American public that their new payphone was something easy to break into, they eventually caught up with this man and offered him a way out of criminal prosecution if he would reveal the secrets of how he compromised there new lock so that a new one could be developed, and he did just that. It turns out the lock had a fatal flaw in its design and could be picked relatively easily if you possessed some advanced lock picking skills. Bell labs and the design department got to work and developed the 30B lock which had what they called “false gates” inside the lock so when someone tried to pick the lock it would let them feel as if it was going to open but was just jamming preventing it from completely turning.

Kids went back to the old idea of stuffing the coin return bucket hoping to prevent money from returning to the customer but the telephone company already thought of that, they redesigned the return bucket with a trap door that would open when you tried to stuff it and would just divert the material out of the way of the coin slot letting the coin return back every time. Real crooks eventually tried to drill into the side to put a discrete screw into the side of the phone to hold the door shut so you couldn’t reach in to get your coin but once this was discovered a new anti-drill plate was added inside the phone to prevent this from happening.

The single slot was a mainstay for the next 44 years in the Verizon footprint until we divested from the Public Communications business in 2012 ending a legacy that no one would have imagined would ever end. The payphone went through many improvements over those years but early on people quickly realized it was easier to cheat on the cost of the call than to get the money out of the phone and this new phone was pretty impenetrable. Trying to make a call for free was where it was at and let me tell you that this idea wasn’t a new one either! It has been going on since the birth of the payphone.

But that’s for another article.



Come visit our museum and feel these payphones in person and learn more about our shared history at the telephone company on the first Sunday of each month from 1-4 PM except holiday weekends

445 Commack Rd Long Island NY
Long IslandTelephoneMuseum.com
@LONGISLANDTELEPHONEMUSEUM
John Stallone
Curator/Historian

HISTORY is Calling!!!!!!!