the London telephone booths are quite attracting and have its own unique history. london kiosks are also a tourist attraction and after lots of designs the k2 design is accepted by the British government. from my perspective or by seeing for the first time it is like time machine for me it is like just enter the booth and just go where ever you want. it takes me to another era. I think if time travel was possible it could be time travel booth anyways lets take a look on the history and some unique facts of this iconic British kiosk.
The red telephone box, a telephone kiosk for a public telephone designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, Malta, Bermuda and Gibraltar.
Despite a reduction in their numbers in recent years, the traditional British red telephone kiosk can still be seen in many places throughout the UK, and in current or former British colonies around the world. The colour red was chosen to make them easy to spot.
From 1926 onwards, the fascias of the kiosks were emblazoned with a prominent crown, representing the British government. The red phone box is often seen as a British cultural icon throughout the world.[1] In 2006, the K2 telephone box was voted one of Britain’s top 10 design icons, which included the Mini, Supermarine Spitfire, London tube map, World Wide Web, Concorde and the AEC Routemaster bus.[2][3] In 2009, the K2 was selected by the Royal Mail for their “British Design Classics” commemorative postage stamp issue.[4] Although production of the traditional boxes ended with the advent of the KX series in 1985, many still stand in Britain.
there are many models of kiosk the first model is k1 which was built in 1921 also they are kept in UK museums .the kiosks models goes up to kiosk 6 from 1. The red telephone box was the result of a competition in 1924 to design a kiosk that would be acceptable to the London Metropolitan Boroughs which had hitherto resisted the Post Office’s effort to erect K1 kiosks on their streets. the burmingham civic society, the royal art commission, the royal architect institute and the town planning institute organised a competition in which sir giles gilbert scott won the competition.
The UK telephone booths are British cultural icons and it is also seen in the other countries like US.
there are also many other uses of the telephone kiosk
During 2009 a K6 in the village of Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset was converted into a library or book exchange replacing the services of the mobile library which no longer visits the village.[40][41][42] Similar libraries now exist in the villages of North Cadbury in Somerset, Great Budworth in Cheshire,[43]Little Shelford and Upwood in Cambridgeshire and some 150 other locations.[44] One such box was donated by Cumbernauld‘s town twinning association and installed as a library in Bron, France.[45] The Telephone Box Book Exchange in Cutnall Green opened in June 2016.
Another K6 stands in Barga, Italy, where it is used as a BookCrossing library. It was donated in 2008 by a couple from Edinburgh, Scotland.[46]
Also in 2009, the town of Settle in North Yorkshire established the Gallery on the Green in a K6, which had been adopted by the Parish Council. The Gallery has featured a range of exhibitions (see the online gallery on the website) of both notable artists and photographers (Tessa Bunney, Martin Parr, Mariana Cook) and local community groups. Its most famous contributor was Brian May, with his stereoscopic photography show ‘A Village Lost and Found’.
Following a competition by a Girl Guide unit in 2011 to find a use for their local disused telephone box in Glendaruel, Argyll, it has been fitted with a defibrillator. The equipment can be accessed only by following instructions from the Scottish Ambulance Service during an emergency call. The conversion of the box was paid for by BT under the Adopt A Kiosk scheme and the defibrillator was supplied by the Community Heartbeat Trust. Similar installations have been made in many other places, including Loweswater, Cumbria,[47][48] Auchenblae, Aberdeenshire, Withernwick, East Riding of Yorkshire, and Witney, Oxfordshire.[49]
the telephone kiosk was used in contemporary art
Scottish sculptor David Mach created the permanent public work Out of Order in 1989 in Kingston upon Thames, London. It takes the form of a row of twelve K6 telephone boxes, the first one upright, the others gradually falling over like dominoes. It was originally intended that the last upright box was to contain a working telephone.
the most fascinating fact fact of the kiosk is they are also used in pop culture music
The red telephone box has appeared in British pop culture. In music it has featured in Adele‘s video “Hello“, the front cover of One Direction‘s album Take Me Home, and the back cover of David Bowie‘s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.[63][64] It was the subject of the 1980 single “Red Frame/White Light” by OMD.[65] In film it features in a prominent scene in the 1955 black comedy The Ladykillers where a motley gang of crooks led by Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) cram into one, and a red telephone box near Scotland Yard appears in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) as Harry Potter and Arthur Weasley enter the Ministry of Magic.[66]
In 2016, British chef Gordon Ramsay opened a British-themed fish restaurant in the Las Vegas Strip, with the doors to the entrance resembling the red telephone box.[67]