(This story was originally written and recorded for Retrocast #34, released on May 20, 2025.)

Back in the spring of 1938, things were getting quite cool at Stanford University, perhaps a little too cool for the telephone company’s liking.

Let me explain:

Like many college students, the male residents of Stanford’s dormitories and fraternity houses were always a bit short on cash. And since this was long before anyone owned a cell phone, the students needed to use a pay phone to call someone.

It’s something that I remember well from my college days in the early 1980s. Between paying for the laundry machines and the payphone, I never seemed to have enough coins.

But the students at Stanford came up with an ingenious solution to this problem, even if it may have been illegal.

They first mixed up some plaster of Paris, made molds of some nickels – that’s all a local call cost back then – and then filled those molds with water.  Pop the water-filled molds in the freezer, and – Voila! – the students soon had ice nickels.

When a student needed to call a friend, maybe even a girlfriend, they would simply head to the refrigerator. There, they would pop an ice nickel from its mold, drop it into the payphone’s coin slot, and they were able to make free calls.

However, the students weren’t able to beat the phone company for very long. That’s because they send around collectors to remove the coins from the money boxes. But instead of finding a trove of real coins, they found something very different. Upon opening the boxes, there was little to no money, only dampness, or just a small puddle of water inside.

The telephone company wasn’t pleased and complained to the University, threatening to remove the payphones if the missing funds weren’t paid. Fortunately, the trouble was smoothed over. Ernest Erwin, the assistant controller of the University, stepped in and paid the outstanding bills to resolve the issue. The students promised never to do it again, bringing an end to their ice nickel scheme.