Invention Was His True Calling

--Next time you touch someone from a pay phone, think of William Gray, who--100 years ago today--filed U.S. Patent No. 408,709 for “A Coin-Controlled Apparatus for Telephones.” As usual, necessity played a role. Gray’s foreman at a Connecticut factory had refused to let him use the company phone to call his sick wife, even though he had offered to pay. The first pay phone was installed at the Hartford Bank, and there are now more than 2 million of them in the United States alone, from the White House to the middle of Death Valley. Intellicall, a manufacturer of private pay phones, notes these landmarks: The first outdoor pay phone booth was installed in Cincinnati in 1905; the use of slugs cost New York Telephone $417,370 in 1935; the first phone booth with a double-hinged door was installed in 1910, and Clark Kent first used a phone booth as a changing room in the September-October, 1949, issue of D.C. Comics. Gray went on to conquer other challenges, inventing an inflatable chest protector for baseball catchers.

--Another invention, the toll booth, evokes other sentiments. Residents in Jacksonville, Fla., this weekend are celebrating the end of 36 years of tolls in their community. “We have taken a quantum leap forward in improving the quality of life for our city,” Mayor Tommy Hazouri said at ceremonies Friday on the Mathews Bridge, which opened in 1953. Tolls also ended, thanks to a newly enacted half-cent city sales tax, on three other bridges and an expressway. The atmosphere on the Mathews Bridge was festive, with crowds cheering, horns honking and the St. Johns River City Band playing. Fireworks went off. The mayor and Chester Stokes, chairman of the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, climbed aboard a large yellow crane, and with the help of a crane operator, toppled several toll booths. The Florida Times-Union proclaimed: “Un-tolled joy: KEEP THE CHANGE.”

--The Navy isn’t talking, but the producers of a video showing Cher in a revealing body stocking singing to hundreds of sailors on the battleship Missouri said they were told that the top brass in Washington feels tarnished. The clip was shot on Independence Day on the deck where Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in 1945, but the Navy apparently was unaware of the video’s sexual overtones. “When you OK Cher’s presence on board you have to expect the unexpected,” a spokeswoman for the singer told Reuters.