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A police box outside Earl's Court tube station in London, United Kingdom, built in 1997 and based on the 1929 Mackenzie Trench design.

A police box is a telephone kiosk or callbox located in a public place for the use of members of the police, or for members of the public to contact the police. Unlike an ordinary callbox, its telephone is mounted on a hinged door so it can be used from the outside, and the interior of the box is, in effect, a miniature police station for use by police officers.

Police boxes pre-date the era of mobile telecommunications; contemporary police officers, in many countries, carry two-way radios and/or mobile phones rather than relying on fixed kiosks.^[1] Many boxes are now disused or have been withdrawn from service.

The typical police box contained a telephone linked directly to the local police station allowing patrolling officers to keep in contact with the station, reporting anything unusual or requesting help if necessary. A light on top of the box would flash to alert an officer that he/she was requested to contact the station.^[1] Members of the public could also use the phone to contact a police station in an emergency.^[1]

British police boxes were usually blue, except in Glasgow, where they were red.^[2] In addition to a telephone, they contained equipment such as an incident book and a first aid kit.^[3] Today the image of the blue police box is a trademark of the BBC as it is widely associated with the science fiction television programme Doctor Who, in which the protagonist's time machine, a TARDIS, is in the shape of a 1950s British police box.^[4]

[edit] History

An 1894 advertisement for the "Glasgow Style Police Signal Box System", sold by the National Telephone Company.

The first police telephone was installed in Albany, New York in 1877, one year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the device.^[5] Call boxes for use by both police and members of the public were first installed in Washington, D.C. in 1883; Chicago and Detroit installed police call boxes in 1884, and in 1885 Boston followed suit.^[5] These were direct line telephones placed on a post which could often be accessed by a key or breaking a glass panel. In Chicago, the telephones were restricted to police use, but the boxes also contained a dial mechanism which members of the public could use to signal different types of alarms: there were eleven signals, including "Police Wagon Required", "Thieves", "Forgers", "Murder", "Accident", "Fire" and "Drunkard".^[6]

The first public police telephones in Britain were introduced in Glasgow in 1891.^[7] These tall, hexagonal, cast-iron boxes were painted red and had large gas lanterns fixed to the roof, as well as a mechanism which enabled the central police station to light the lanterns as signals to police officers in the vicinity to call the station for instructions.^[7]

Rectangular, wooden police boxes were introduced in Sunderland in 1923, and Newcastle in 1925.^[8] The Metropolitan Police (Met) introduced police boxes throughout London between 1928 and 1937,^[9] and the design that later became the most well-known was created for the Met by Gilbert Mackenzie Trench in 1929.^[10] The earliest boxes were made of wood, followed by boxes made of concrete. Officers complained that the concrete boxes were extremely cold. For use by the officers, the interiors of the boxes normally contained a stool, a table, brushes and dusters, a fire extinguisher, and a small electric heater.^[9] Like the 19th century Glaswegian boxes, the London police boxes contained a light at the top of each box, which would flash as a signal to police officers indicating that they should contact the station; the lights were, by this time, electrically powered.^[9]

By 1953 there were 685 police boxes on the streets of London.^[11] Police boxes played an important role in police work until 1969-1970, when they were phased out following the introduction of personal radios. As the main function of the boxes was superseded by the rise of portable telecommunications devices like the walkie-talkie, very few police boxes remain in Britain today. Some have been converted into High Street coffee bars. These are common in Edinburgh, though the City also has dozens that remain untouched — most in various states of disrepair. Edinburgh's boxes are relatively large, and are of a rectangular plan, with a design inspired by the city's abundance of neoclassical architecture.^[12] One police box situated in the Leicestershire town of Newtown Linford is still used by local police today.^[13][14]

In 1994 the Strathclyde Police decided to scrap the remaining Glasgow police boxes.^[15] However, due to the intervention of the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust and the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, some police boxes were retained and remain today as part of Glasgow's architectural heritage.^[15] At least four remain—on Great Western Road (at the corner of Byres Road); Buchanan Street; one painted red on Wilson Street; and one near the corner of Cathedral Square. There is also a red police box preserved in the Glasgow Museum of Transport. The police boxes in Glasgow on Great Western Road, Cathedral Square, and Buchanan Street are currently under licence to a Glasgow-based coffee outlet.^[12] As of 2009^[update], only the Great Western Road and Buchanan Street boxes have been transformed to dispense beverages, and restrictions are enforced by the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust to prevent the exterior of the boxes from being modified beyond the trademarked design. The Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust now manage eleven of the UK's last "Gilbert Mackenzie Trench" Police Signal Boxes on behalf of a private collector. Another blue police box of this style is preserved at the National Tramway Museum, Crich, Derbyshire.

In 1997, a new police box based on the Mackenzie Trench design was erected outside the Earl's Court tube station in London, equipped with CCTV cameras and a telephone to contact police.^[9] The telephone ceased to function in April 2000 when London's telephone numbers were changed, but the box remained despite the fact that funding for its upkeep and maintenance had long since been exhausted. In March 2005, the Metropolitan Police resumed funding the refurbishment and maintenance of the box (which is something of a tourist attraction due to the Doctor Who association — see below).

Glasgow introduced a new design of police boxes in 2005. The new boxes are not booths but rather computerized kiosks that connect the caller to a police CCTV control room operator. They stand ten feet in height with a chrome finish and act as 24-hour information points, with three screens providing information on crime prevention, police force recruitment and even tourist information.^[16]

Manchester also have "Help Points" similar to those in Glasgow which contain a siren that is activated upon the emergency button being pressed, this also causes CCTV cameras nearby to focus on the Help Point.

Liverpool has structures similar to police boxes, known as police "Help Points" which are essentially an intercom box with a push button mounted below a CCTV camera on a post with a direct line to the police.

[edit] Doctor Who

1980s Fibreglass TARDIS prop seen at BBC Television Centre.

The BBC science-fiction television series Doctor Who features a time machine, the TARDIS, disguised as a Mackenzie Trench-style police box. Doctor Who was originally transmitted from 1963 to 1989; as police boxes were phased out in the 1970s, over time the image of the blue police box became associated as much with Doctor Who as with the police. In 1996, the BBC applied for a trademark to use the blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who.^[17] In 1998, the Metropolitan Police filed an objection to the trademark claim, maintaining that they owned the rights to the police box image. In 2002 the Patent Office ruled in favour of the BBC, pointing out that there was no evidence that the Metropolitan Police—or any other police force—had ever registered the image as a trademark.^[4][18][19] In addition, the BBC had been selling merchandise based on the image for over three decades without complaint by the police.^[18] The series was revived in 2005 and the police box continues to feature prominently in almost every episode.

[edit] Gallery of police boxes

This Edinburgh police box now serves as a coffee shop.	A police box on the seafront at Scarborough.	An old police box (no telephone) in Covent Garden, London	A fully modern police box in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, based on the British concept.
A police box in San Francisco, California; one of several still in the city.	Police Telephone Post (non-working) still at St. Martin's Le Grand, London — painted (incorrectly) in 'Met' dark blue. 'City' boxes were painted in a light blue.

[edit] See also

• Emergency telephone
• Kōban, Japanese police substation, sometimes called a "police box"
• Red telephone box
• TARDIS

[edit] References

• Stewart, Robert W. (June 1994). "The Police Signal Box: A 100 Year History" (PDF). University of Strathclyde. http://www.eee.strath.ac.uk/r.w.stewart/boxes.pdf. Retrieved 2007-01-17. 

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Police boxes

• Metropolitan Police - History of the police box
• The Police Public Call Box at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash)
• A feature on Glasgow's police boxes at YouTube (requires Adobe Flash)
• The TARDIS Library - A guide to the various police box props used in Doctor Who over the years, and their relationship to real police boxes
• The Police Box page - from Ian McPherson's Kiosk Korner
• The Great Edinburgh TARDIS Quest - Flickr set devoted to tracking down remaining Edinburgh police boxes.
• Earliest Glasgow police box discovered
• PoliceBoxes.com - Catalogue of model police boxes
• http://www.tramway.co.uk - Website of the National Tramway Museum, Crich, Derbyshire