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The TARDIS looks like a Police Box doesn't it? So why have I made so many different models?

Well believe it or not, the TARDIS doesn't look exactly like a Police Box, and it never has. Since 1963 the BBC prop that the Doctor gets in and out of every week has changed in several subtle (and some not so subtle) ways. A lot of those changes are down to budget and repair, but some of them are down to the way that Television has changed in the years that the Doctor has been on our screens.

But first let's look at the Police Box itself.

The Metropolitan Police Box Police Boxes have been around in Britain since the 19th Century, but it wasn't until 1929 that Scottish architect Gilbert McKenzie Trench produced a design for the new standard type of box to be installed by the London Metropolitan Police. This is the box that was the inspiration for the iconic TARDIS of Doctor Who fame, and it is worth noting one large difference between London boxes and the TARDIS: Although early Police boxes were made of wood, the one that the TARDIS was based on wasn't. They were built from a concrete mould, with only one part of them made of wood - the right hand door. That's right, the TARDIS may be an old wooden box, but a Metropolitan Police Box wasn't. It's also worth noting that not only does only one of the "doors" open (the other "door" being part of the concrete shell), but it also opens outwards, not inwards. There are two reasons for this: The inside of the box isn't big, so there wouldn't be a lot of room for the door to open inwards.

The concrete floor inside slopes slightly upward from the doorway, to allow for drainage, so the door wouldn't be able to open inwards anyway! However, just to muddy the waters a bit more, not all Metropolitan Police Boxes are the same. As London's boxes were built at different times (between the years 1929 and 1948) and by different contractors, there are slight but noticeable differences that can be seen in old photographs. The sign boxes are slightly wider in some models, and the stacked roof slightly higher. Not only that, but the placing of the signs on the door panels has also changed over the years. All Metropolitan Police Boxes however have a roof-top lamp made of glass of a distinctive "Fresnel" design, similar to those used in lighthouses, and contrary to popular belief they did not flash with a blue light, but with a white one. The lamp was connected to a ringer circuit, so when the phone inside the box rang, the light flashed in time, to alert the policeman on his beat. Most of the window panes are clear glass, except for the bottom two corner panes of each window, which are "hammered" or "pebbled" glass, and of a darker tinted blue. Although Police boxes have now disappeared from London streets, there are surprisingly still a few around if you know where to look. The iconic McKenzie Trench box was not only confined to London. Glasgow had them too, and although these Scottish boxes have some slight differences (they were painted red instead of blue, and their lamps tend to have a metal frame around them), they are recognisably the same design. There are currently three of these boxes still on the streets of Glasgow (and a couple in Museums). But if you want to see an existing Metropolitan Police Box then take a trip to the Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire, where you can see the original Wimbledon box. Well that's the Police Box, but how is the TARDIS different?