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Old 31st Aug 2018, 8:06 pm   #5
Dave Moll
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: West Cumbria (CA13), UK
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Default Re: GPO exchange codes for charging dockets

Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott37 View Post
I'm puzzled by the first list. It does not contain any specific tariff details but I can see it is biased towards the south of England (no Dundee or Motherwell). I assume it predates STD and was used for operator calls. How would they cope with charging for places not on the list (of which there are plenty)?
I would imagine that the operator just needed to record the information necessary (destination plus length of call) for later calculation of the charge for the call, so that they could move on to the next call as quickly as possible.

As I said, these would be for calls originating from Oxford, and I imagine that the destinations listed were the only ones my mother dealt with. Perhaps calls to other destinations needed to be pre-booked.

My understanding is that getting married, and particularly having children, put an end to a telephonist's career in those days, which would put my mother's time at the switchboard into the late 1930s into the start of WWII at the latest.
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