The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 41, October 13, 2002, Article 8

TELEPHONE TOKEN HISTORY

  To sum up what is known about the Italian Telephone tokens
  we've been discussing, Marco Fiumani writes: "The first official
  Italian telephone tokens appeared on the first half of the 20th
  century and in Italy the STIPEL (Società Telefonica Interregionale
  Piemontese e Lombarda) introduced the first telephone tokens
  to the Fair of Milan in 1927.  The experimentation with little
  public phones for city telephone calls that worked with tokens
  with three grooves, of the cost of 60 cts of lira.  The success of
  the experiment meant that the public phones multiplied and in
  the succeeding year also the TIMO (Società Telefoni Medio
  Orientale) and the TELVE (Società Telefonica delle Venezie)
  imitated the STIPEL.

  The TETI (Telefonica Tirrena) instead began from 1930 to
  introduce public phones working with coins of 50 cts.  In 1935
  also the TETI pass to coin tokens made of aluminum and
  subsequently of zinc of the dimensions of the currency coins
  and without grooves; only during the 1945 the TETI unified
  with the other societies with a token with three grooves.

  The fifth company that coined telephone tokens in Italy was
  the SET (Società Esercizi Telefonici) in the south of Italy.
  The token issued in this period belong to the ?first period?
  of Italian telephone tokens.  After a telephonic reform, when
  the monopoly incumbent SIP joined all the previous telephone
  companies, the public phone were standardized and the ESM
  company (Emilio Senesi Medaglie, Milan), began to coin
  regular telephone tokens for all of Italy.

  In August of 1959 the ESM began dating the tokens by
  year and month.  Four figures indicate the year and the month
  of coinage. As an example 5909 indicates that the token it was
  coined in September 1959. This kind of token was coined till
  March 1972 with 122 different dates.  Those token belong to
  the ?second period?.

  Subsequently, increasing the number of the public phones, also
  the IPM (Industria Politecnica Meridionale in Arzano, Naples),
  CMM (Costruzioni Minuterie Metalliche, Santagata Catania)
  and the UT (Urmet Costruzioni Elettrotelefoniche Turin) began
  to coin the tokens until November 1980, last one coin known
  (IPM 8011). They coined the tokens with the manufacturers'
  logo in addition to the year/month group.

  In the 1970s telephone tokens ended up substituting for
  standard coins of the same 200 lire denomination. In 1972
  one token was manufactured for each Italian; by 1978 there
  were seven tokens produced per head of population.
  Between 1927 and 1980, the year when tokens ceased to
  be manufactured and the first dual-function phonecard/token
  telephones were introduced, a total of around 600 million
  tokens were issued in Italy.  On 31 December 2001 the
  telephone token was finally, definitively taken out of circulation.
  It remains a collector's-item for coin collectors and enthusiasts
  alike."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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