pay phone story

Name	Televerket Telefonautomat 597
Date	c. 1960s–1970s
Manufacturer	probably L.M. Ericsson for Televerket

Televerket Telefonautomat 597 – Sweden

The Televerket Telefonautomat 597 was a classic Swedish public payphone developed for the state telephone administration, Televerket. The surviving Televerket designation is Type 597 / LZBA 50117. Sources confirm that the model remained in service from 1976 until 1988, after which it was no longer permitted for new installations.

The precise factory responsible for every 597 is difficult to establish from surviving documentation. Televerket itself had substantial manufacturing and workshop capacity, while L.M. Ericsson was its major Swedish equipment supplier; however, I would not describe the 597 as an Ericsson product without a manufacturer’s plate or catalogue confirming this. It is safest to identify it as a Televerket-designed/specified Swedish telephone automat.

The rugged unit used a heavy green metal enclosure, rotary dial and black handset. Earlier examples, including those pictured, were configured as three-coin machines, with slots marked 10 öre, 25 öre and 1 krona. Later Type 597s were converted to accept 1-krona coins only, and Televerket documentation records the 597 specifically as a one-krona machine during 1976–1988.

Another distinctive feature is the prominent “SOS – TAG 90000” emergency button, referring to Sweden’s former national emergency number.

These telephones became a familiar fixture of Televerket’s public network, particularly inside the distinctive orange Model 41 telephone kiosks. Surviving documentation specifically records Model 41 kiosks equipped with the 597.

Today, the 597 and its orange kiosk form one of the most recognisable combinations from Sweden’s later mechanical-payphone era.

Below- interesting adapted model used in Finland.

Finland’s use of Swedish Ericsson payphones reflected the close industrial and telecommunications links between the two Nordic countries. Finland had its own telephone industry, but neighbouring Sweden possessed one of the world’s leading manufacturers in L.M. Ericsson, whose equipment was already proven in demanding public networks. Finnish operators could therefore purchase reliable, established coin-telephone technology rather than develop every system domestically. Ericsson also designed equipment readily adaptable for export markets. The Finnish example illustrates this perfectly: essentially a Swedish three-coin payphone, it was modified for Finnish currency and carries multilingual instructions. Such cross-border equipment procurement was quite normal within the Nordic telecommunications market.