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Scott37 · 16th Sep 2018, 9:15 pm

Just as I thought I understood this, I visited the Postal Museum and saw a few call boxes. I noticed this list of dialling codes. It appears they have 'redacted' the name of the local exchange though I assume it was to the north of London. As far as I can see, for a local number you dialled the number only (no code). How would the exchange know this was a local number? Nowadays all codes start with '0'. In earlier days of all-figure numbers I think they were '0', '8' or '9'. How did this previous system work? Did they have to find all the codes and exclude local numbers starting with the same digits, or did they take the first digit of the local numbers and make sure this was not used as the start of any code? How did this fit in with the idea of having meaningful codes?

16th Sep 2018, 9:15 pm	#23
Scott37 Tetrode Join Date: Aug 2018 Location: Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Posts: 55	Re: Dialling before STD Just as I thought I understood this, I visited the Postal Museum and saw a few call boxes. I noticed this list of dialling codes. It appears they have 'redacted' the name of the local exchange though I assume it was to the north of London. As far as I can see, for a local number you dialled the number only (no code). How would the exchange know this was a local number? Nowadays all codes start with '0'. In earlier days of all-figure numbers I think they were '0', '8' or '9'. How did this previous system work? Did they have to find all the codes and exclude local numbers starting with the same digits, or did they take the first digit of the local numbers and make sure this was not used as the start of any code? How did this fit in with the idea of having meaningful codes? Attached Thumbnails Last edited by Scott37; 16th Sep 2018 at 9:36 pm. Reason: Comprehensibility