Police Box emergency phone
1928-1996

When British police officers walked the beat in the years before widespread police radio use, they needed a way to keep in touch with the station. Enter the Police Telephone Box, also known as simply a Police Box, roadside booths which appeared throughout the United Kingdom during much of the 20th century. The iconic blue box featured a direct telephone line to Headquarters for police and public use, as well as a small enclosed space for officers to escape the weather, catch up on paperwork, or have a cup of tea. The telephones behind the booth’s small external “POLICE TELEPHONE” door changed model with the times; the phone pictured here might have been found throughout the mid-20th century.

The booths fell out of favor as officers spent less time walking the beat and gained more access to wireless communication, but the Police Box still endures as the disguise taken by the TARDIS, the iconic time and space machine at the heart of television’s Doctor Who.