In 1959, the world – or at least the English speaking world – was swept by a silly fad, as people competed to see how many folk they could stuff within the confines of a public telephone booth. The fad lasted only a few months. In that time, it attracted a lot of public attention, and was widely covered by both print and broadcast media. Below are some interesting facts about that strange fad.
A Fad’s Unlikely Origins
The phone booth stuffing fad is often assumed to have gotten its start in US West Coast colleges. In reality, it got its start quite some distance away, in far off Durban, South Africa. There, in early 1959, twenty five students tried to see if they could all fit inside a phone booth. With considerable effort, they pulled it off, and submitted their weird deed to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Word of the Durban students’ stunt spread to other campuses in South Africa, and from there, to other countries. Before long, phone booth stuffing had become a phenomenon around the world, as the fad made its way to England, Canada, and the United States. Participation was simple. People – college students for the most part – had to cram themselves into a phone booth, one after another, until it completely stuffed and nobody else could fit in. As seen below, although it seemed straightforward, there was a lot of complexity involved.
Phone Booth Stuffing Took College Campuses by Storm
College students began to skip class in order to devise plans to beat the phone booth stuffing record. Schematics were drawn to try and figure out the optimal configuration for squeezing the most people into a small space. The pastime was named “telephone booth squash” in Britain, where some students went on diets to reduce their bulks. Across the Pond, in MIT, some turned to geometry and advanced calculus to figure out the most efficient configuration for stuffing bodies into the limited confines of a public phone booth.
Some cried foul as the competition heated up, and challenged claims because of violations of supposed rules that should have been followed. Some insisted that a telephone booth stuffing did not count unless somebody inside was able to make a phone a call. In some campuses, the count was based on how many people managed to place any part of their body inside the booth. They were challenged by others who contended that it only counted if all participants had their entire bodies inside. Eventually, amidst heated accusations of cheating and bitter recriminations, the fad faded out and was over by the end of 1959.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Long, Mark A. – Bad Fads (2002)
