: 3 These were direct line telephones usually placed inside a metal box on a post which could often be accessed by a key or breaking a glass panel. installed its own system Detroit installed police call boxes in 1884, and in 1885, Boston followed suit. Call boxes for use by both police and trusted members of the public were first installed in Chicago in 1880, initially housed in kiosks to protect the inner signal boxes from the weather and to limit access to them so as to discourage false alarms. The first police telephone was installed in Albany, New York in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. The blue police box is usually associated with the science fiction television programme Doctor Who, in which the protagonist's time machine, a TARDIS, is disguised as a British police box. Labelled a "British icon" by the Plymouth Herald, the blue Metropolitan Police boxes, designed by Gilbert Mackenzie Trench in 1929, became Britain's most recognisable police boxes. In addition to a telephone, they contained equipment such as an incident book, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. Police boxes were usually blue, with the most notable exception being Glasgow, where they were red until the late 1960s. A light on top of the box would flash to alert an officer that they were requested to contact the station. The typical British police box contained a telephone linked directly to the local police station, allowing patrolling officers to keep in contact with the station, reporting anything unusual or requesting help if necessary. Unlike an ordinary callbox, its telephone was located behind a hinged door so it could be used from the outside, and the interior of the box was, in effect, a miniature police station for use by police officers to read and fill in reports, take meal breaks and even temporarily hold detainees until the arrival of transport. It was used in some countries, most widely in the United Kingdom throughout the 20th century from the early 1920s. A police box outside Earl's Court tube station in London, built in 1996 and based on the 1929 Gilbert Mackenzie Trench designĪ police box is a public telephone kiosk or callbox for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police.
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