Harbor Freeway gets call boxes
July 10, 1965: Highway officials inaugurated the emergency call box system on the Harbor Freeway between the interchange of the Santa Monica and Harbor freeways and El Segundo Boulevard.
“The system includes 80 boxes spaced at quarter-mile intervals. The telephones are connected to the police switchboard,” The Times reported.
Freeway call boxes were first proposed in 1959 by Los Angeles County director of communications Maurice E. Kennedy.
In 1962, after the Federal Communications Commission approved the $92,000 cost, the boxes were demonstrated in Hollywood style. A young beauty named Carol Hamilton posed for a photo that ran in The Times as she pushed a red button on the front of one of the boxes.
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