Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum Centre & City of Wetaskiwin Archives

Ring Ring! Incoming call from the latest artifact shared by the Heritage Museum. This was the last working Payphone in Wetaskiwin. Telus removed it from the hospital on June 16, 2022. With personal cell phones increasing in the developed world, the payphone demand has decreased. The decrease in orders started in early 2000.
Public payphones have been in use since the late 19th century. The first being invented by William Gray, who, according to some sources, had trouble finding a telephone to call a doctor for his ailing wife. This leads him to the idea of a coin-operated public phone. He received a patent for his invention on August 13, 1889. The first installment was at the Hartford Bank in Connecticut by the Southern New England Telephone Company that same year. Gray would start the Gary Telephone Pay Station Company to market this new invention.