pay phone story

Name	Luoyang Mudan Single-Slot Coin Payphone
Date	1994
Manufacturer	Luoyang Mudan Communications Co., Ltd.
Patent link	https://patents.google.com/patent/CN2188829Y/zh

Luoyang Mudan Single-Slot Coin Payphone

This blue wall-mounted payphone carries a worn Beijing Municipal Telephone Bureau sticker instructing callers to insert five-jiao coins. The posted rate for a local call was five jiao (half a yuan) per three minutes. Below the handset and keypad, pictograms show the sequence for placing a call. The cabinet has a single coin slot at the upper right, a small display above the keypad and a coin-return flap in the lower panel.

The name on the lower instruction panel appears to read Luoyang Mudan Communications Co., Ltd. (洛阳牡丹通讯股份有限公司). The company traces its roots to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications’ Luoyang Telephone Equipment Factory in Henan, also known as Factory 537. The factory helped draft China’s 1997 technical standard for coin telephones, which covered both attended indoor and unattended outdoor equipment.

In April 1994, the Luoyang factory filed a patent for a payphone mechanism that accepted several coin denominations through a single channel. The patent, CN2188829Y, was published in February 1995. The surviving Beijing tariff sticker records the coin denomination callers were asked to use on this particular phone. Its precise model number and date of manufacture remain unknown, and the photographs leave open whether it contains the patented mechanism.

Below- It filed patent CN2188829Y in 1994 for a payphone that accepted several coin denominations through a single coin channel. It also helped draft China’s 1997 coin-telephone standard.

China’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued YD/T 579-1997, its technical standard for coin-operated telephones, on 13 November 1997. It took effect on 1 January 1998, replacing the 1992 edition. The standard covered coin telephones connected to the public switched telephone network, including attended indoor units and unattended outdoor machines. It set technical requirements and specified test methods, inspection rules, marking, packaging, transport and storage. The Ministry’s Telecommunications Transmission Research Institute and the Luoyang Telephone Equipment Factory jointly drafted it. Manufacturers and inspectors could use the standard as a common reference for designing, producing and checking coin-operated telephones in China.