Telephones

[Marine Boy]

Re: Telephones

This link features a really excellent over-view on retro phones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF5Qu...eature=related

[ricasso]

Re: Telephones

We had a party line when we got our first phone. It was with a young woman across the Crescent and it pinged if she received or made a call. Sometimes if you wanted to ring out she would be on so I always covered the mouth piece just in case. It was one one such mouth piece covering that I discovered that she was a 'professional' woman taking bookings over the phone. I only received £1 pocket money a week so the revelation was no good to me and Mum and Dad asked BT to give us a dedicated line the following day.

our first phone was on a party line, I tell my kids about it today and they dont believe me! I remember my Dad putting one of thos little locks on the dial but lt was the easiest thing in the world to pick!

[PC66]

Re: Telephones

I would imagine (if we all grew up in the 70's) that we ALL had the same phone. The GPO rotary dial was the only model available back then until the Trimphone came out.

The 746 model pictured at the top of this thread was the standard-issue desk phone in the 1970's, available in black, ivory, blue, red, yellow, two-tone green, and two-tone grey. The earlier 706 was also still very much in service, looking very similar in appearance to the 746 to the casual observer, but with a slightly different shape to the case. Aside from colour variations, the 706 also tended to vary a little more in overall appearance depending upon the dial option fitted: Some had older dial with metal finger wheels, some had plastic which were either colour-matched to the case or clear, as was standard for the 746. Depending upon the area and when the phone was originally installed (and whether anything had been replaced later), some dials had figures only and some were fitted with rings showing letters as well. The 711/741 equivalent wall versions were available but in a much more restricted range of colours.
Certainly in the early part of the decade there were also still some of the older 300-series bakelite phones in use (mostly black, manufacture was discontinued in 1959 following the introduction of the 700-series).

As for the Trimphone, it made its first appearance in 1964 and was available as an option in most areas during the 1970's. By the end of the decade the standard 700-series phones and the Trimphone were available in push-button versions as well as dial, and the model 776 Compact telephone was also an option (three basic colour choices, but a special version was also made for Silver Jubilee year in 1977).

So there were some choices, but, of course, all telephone instruments were rented from Post Office Telephones throughout the 1970's and anything except a basic model (746 etc.) carried an extra quarterly rental charge.

Once the 1980's arrived with the creation of British Telecom and the introduction of the modular plug & jack arrangement ready for privatization and customer-owned telephones, the range expanded enormously.

[PC66]

Re: Telephones

I remember my Dad putting one of thos little locks on the dial but lt was the easiest thing in the world to pick!

No need to do that even: Numbers could be pulsed out on the cradle switch!

I remember the old red telephone boxes with big black telephones. 3d for a call and press button B to get your money back if they didn't answer. You pressed button A if they answered and your 3d dropped down so you could talk back.

By the end of the 1960's the cost of a local call in those kiosks had gone up to 4d. But the pay-on-answer telephones had gradually been replacing them during that decade, introduced in 1959 in order to operate with STD. Local calls on those phones were timed but the minimum charge was originally 3d., later increased to 6d. by the time "D-Day" (15th February 1971) came round, at which point the coin mechanisms were changed for decimal coinage and the minimum fee became 2p, with the time adjusted accordingly. The "A/B" boxes which were still in service had to be converted too, although their numbers dwindled rapidly during the 1970's (and the last one survived in a remote location in the Scottish Highlands until as late as 1984).

I remember our phone number only had 5 digits at first then they put a 5 infront of all the numbers in the area and later a 2 infront of the 5. No more after that though.

Newcastle was the only area to switch to 7-digit numbering during that era. The six urban areas of London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester had all had 7-digit numbers for years (all by circa 1950, many years earlier in some cases). Newcastle and the surrounding area gradually switched to 7-digit numbering over a period of several years during the early-mid 1980's, adopting the new 091 STD code at the same time. Nowhere else adopted 7-digit numbers until the mid-1990's when multiple changes were made and many other expanding cities acquired new STD codes and 7-digit numbers: Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Bristol, and Reading. This was when some places then got the first ever 8-digit numbers: London, Southampton & Portsmouth, Coventry, Cardiff, and the whole of Northern Ireland.

But back during the 1970's/1980's era, local numbers were typically between 3 and 6 digits in length, except for the 7-digit cities mentioned above. At the very beginning of the 1970's, there were still a few rural areas in which local calls were dialed as just 2 digits. The trend during this period was for areas to be incorporated into linked numbering schemes (i.e. several nearby places all shared a common numbering system so that you no longer had to look up special local dialling codes) and numbering to be extended in length to allow for this (as well as for general expansion in towns which outgrew their existing schemes). Mixed 4- and 5-digit numbers were also common in many towns at that time, and mixed 4-, 5-, and 6-digit numbers in an area became increasingly common until eventually toward the end of the period in question 6-digit numbers became standard. But even today, there are still some places with only 5-digit local numbers, and Brampton (Cumberland) still has 4-digit local numbers, the only such remaining place in the country.

[PC66]

Re: Telephones

P.S. And don't forget that at the beginning of the 1970's, there were still some areas with manual service, where you just picked up and waited for an operator to answer and ask what number you required. Although generally associated with small, rural areas, the last manual exchange in England was actually quite sizeable: Abingdon, Berkshire, which converted to automatic in 1975. The last manual exchange in the U.K. as a whole was Portree, on the Isle of Skye, which went auto in 1976.

Over in the Republic of Ireland, the last manual exchange at Mountshannon, Co. Clare, survived until as late as 1987.

[Arran]

Re: Telephones

Does anybody remember local dialling codes? They could be very confusing and often more trouble than they were worth but BT strongly preferred that they were used rather than the STD code because in the days of Strowger and crossbar they routed the calls directly from exchange to exchange whereas using the STD code would tie up equipment in STD exchanges. This is the reason why BT listed numbers in directories with the name of the town rather than the STD code for the town next to the number.

Also, does anybody remember core and ring STD codes where in certain cities the city centre and most of the suburbs had one STD code (the core code) and some suburbs and outlying towns and villages had another STD code (the ring code)? In time the exchanges in the ring code became absorbed into the numbering plan of the core code and the ring code was no longer used after the last exchange was transferred.

[Richard1978]

Re: Telephones

I remember until the 1990s some phone numbers were quoted as a town name followed by the local number ie. Anytown 12345.

I guess with mobile phones coming along the full number needed to be given.

[Arran]

Re: Telephones

Local dialling codes ended on PhONEday in 1995. By then very few remained in use because most had been eliminated when exchanges were incorporated into linked numbering schemes and ring codes had vanished.

My mother used to create lists of local dialling codes and the corresponding STD code in both alphabetical and numerical order that were more sophisticated than the lists that BT sent out.

[DSCOMAN]

Re: Telephones

and tv progs used to give out people's names and address when they won a competition......I remember at a lads Christmas party we all rang up the winner of a 'Big Match' prize and congratulated him....he was stunned - that was before you had to take out a loan to phone directory enquiries!

[Arran]

Re: Telephones

Has anybody seen a working Strowger telephone exchange in real life with its thousands of relays and stepping selectors? The last of the Strowger was removed from the BT network when I was about 5 years old but I have seen a few privately owned exchanges click away.

[zabadak]

Re: Telephones

Even now, some people still quote London numbers incorrectly: as, for example, 0207 123 4567, instead of 020 7123 4567. This may seem trivial but, in the London area, you can omit the 020 but not the 0207 (or 8)...

[Arran]

Re: Telephones

Telephone plugs and sockets from the 1970s

[staffslad]

Re: Telephones

We got our first telephone in 1971. It was the standard hard-wired GPO model, mustard in colour, and sat on a small shelf in the hall. Next to it my parents put a small wooden box with a slot in which we were supposed to deposit coins each time a call was made. Our first line was a party line, though I don't remember ever picking up the receiver and finding it in use. Back then calls were expensive and consequently far fewer were made.

[marc]

Re: Telephones

My parents did not have a telephone until the late 1980s. This was mostly down to my father, he has always been a right miser where spending money was, and still is, concerned. What put my mother off, was cost back in the 1970s. A party line was a little cheaper, but after the experience my aunt had with her party line, my mother said never.

My aunt had a party line with a woman several doors away from where she lived. All was well at first. Has time progressed, the woman ended up having numerous phone calls where she seemed to spend hours on the phone. My aunt missed several important phone calls. There was also several incidents, where the woman had not replaced the receiver properly on the phone. This blocked my aunt from making and receiving calls. This erupted into a row between them. In the end, my aunt got rid of the party line.

Does any body know when party lines came to an end?

[Arran]

Re: Telephones

When was the last time you encountered a pay on answer payphone? The date when the last pay on answer payphone was taken out of service is one of the nation's best kept secrets that even BT doesn't have a record of. It would have been connected to an analogue telephone exchange because digital exchanges don't have the controller circuits to operate them.