Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott37
Thanks, but I think you may be referring to a later era. The list I posted shows codes which - after converting letters to numbers - start with all sorts of digits. Could it be that this list applies only to Director areas? If so, did other exchanges have lettered local codes? How did the system distinguish between code starts and number starts?
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The local codes from London DA would be those digits that hadn't already be used as the initial digits of exchange names (the letters were only used to make remembering numbers easier). That list that you have is purely from exchanges in the London 'Director' area. Codes between those exchanges .outside the Director area would have been quite different. Bear in mind that a 'Director' as used in a Director Area was a mechanism that translated the initially dialled digits into the actual code that was needed to be dialled through usually more than one exchange to reach the distant exchange - whether it was in the Director area or one of the local 'fringe' area exchanges.
Don't look to deeply as in later years, the local code from London DA to 'Lea Valley' exchange on the east side of London was '9' (Lea Valley had six digit numbers) but at the same time, the local code from the LDA to Walton-on-Thames on the opposite side of London was '98' or to Redhill in Surrey was '91' . It was all handled by the Director which looked up the digits dialled and translated them into the digits actually required to be sent to set the call up.