Quote:
Originally Posted by Hermitcrab
The facility to dial numbers in other countries from the UK was known as ISD (International Subscriber Dialling) at first, then changed to IDD (International Direct Dialling) later on. It was introduced in 1963 from London to Paris, and extended to the rest of France later.
Progress in extending IDD throughout the UK was quite slow. Until 1972 it was only available in the 6 cities with all figure numbers: London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. In 1972 Leeds and Cardiff got IDD, although as I lived in Leeds at the time I know that many people didn't know that, and many calls must have been made through the international operator which could actually have been dialled direct.
By 1982 everybody in the UK could now dial their own international calls to most countries, and that's something we take for granted these days.
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Even by the mid 1970's it wasn't available on all exchanges in the 'Director' areas listed above. Morningside (031 447) & Loanhead (031-440) in the Edinburgh Director Area plus Hightown (051-929) and Kirkby (051-547) in the Liverpool Director Area didn't get IDD until the mid1970's.
The introduction of IDD also presented a problem as in 1963, Paris was still using letters as part of their dialling code in the way that we did in 'Director' areas in the UK. One of their exchanges went by the name of ROQuette which ended up with the addition of the letter 'Q' adjacent to the letter 'O' /zero on UK dials. See picture of an early Tele 706 without the 'Q' .The 1963 London code book tells you to dial '010 33 1 the 'ROO' if your dial hasn't got a 'Q' (see bottom of 'blue page attached)
Here in the North West we also had from the early days of IDD, codes starting with '00' to reach exchanges in the 'Republic of Ireland' but these were later replaced with 010 and the country code for the 'Republic of Ireland' 353 and the Irish area codes in the mid-1980's. For instance Limerick numbers were reached by dialling 0006 followed by the Limerick number but then it changed to 010 353 61. However on CNet, we still dial these old codes for instance 0006 66 reaches 'Craggy Island' well known from Father Ted who can be reached by dialling Craggy Island 32 or Father Jack on 26
