Quote:
Originally Posted by OscarFoxtrot
[B]<snip> The London Toll Area boundary was extended in 1923 and again in 1928, so that eventually Southampton, Portsmouth, Reading, Bedford, Colchester and the whole of Kent and Sussex were included. The system was later introduced to other large cities and remained in use until the late 1950s when, with the advent of Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD), Toll was eventually phased out.
In the London telephone area, calls to subscribers who were not serviced by Director telephone systems within local call-charging range of the London Director exchange area were carried by tandem exchange Toll A: a subscriber would dial a prefix code, typically two letters plus zero, one or two figures (e.g. DA, EP5, LK85) followed by the number of the other subscriber on the fringe non-director exchange. To avoid confusion, three-letter dialling codes were not used for calls from the director area to the fringe area, even if they corresponded to the same holes in the dial (e.g. the Hoddesdon and Mogador codes were HO3 and MO4 respectively).
https://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/BTsHi...o1968/1921.htm
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trunk_...toll_telephony |
Only Birmingham and Manchester ever got a TOL 'exchange' facility. The BT website is a bit optimistic! Their information isn't always correct
Bear in mind as well, that the 'TOL' facility was only a separate manual switchboard that could set the 'shorter distance' 'trunk' calls up on demand - it wasn't a system where subscribers could dial their own calls. In London, it should not be confused with Toll A and Toll B automatic exchanges that opened after WW2 to allow London Director area subscribers to dial a code to reach lines on exchanges just outside the Director area for which the charge was that of a 'local' call. The exchanges reached by dialling 'TOL' then connected by the TOL operator, were outside the local call area. I remember visiting Toll A and Toll B late one Friday afternoon and helping myself to various 'interesting' relay sets - there were quite a few 'Outgoing to CB exchange' ones from the routes to manual exchanges just outside the London Director area. Good job BT had provided me with a Transit & driver to get them all back up North! What a day out.
The 'local' charge calls to outside of a Director area nearly always ended up with 7 digits being dialled to keep the 'Directors' happy with their translation. Thus if calling say a UAX13 with three digit numbers the code would be four digits long - see Tanworth-in-Arden on attached Birmingham Director Area code card. Likewise, Coventry, Cradely Heath, Dudley & Wolverhampton (and one or two others) had five digit numbers hence two digit codes. Where an exchange had numbers of different lengths, each 'length' had a different code but for the same exchange!
Bear in mind that things were forever changing so there would end up being exceptions.