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Vintage Telephony and Telecomms Vintage Telephones, Telephony and Telecomms Equipment |
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12th Jul 2014, 9:40 am | #1 |
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AFN Telephone Codes
AFN denotes "All Figures Numbers (Now)" The name of a campaign to publicise the introduction of All Figure Numbers in the mid 1960's. They'd run out of three letter director codes like MAYfair, BELgravia and WHItehall which made sense. There were some interesting ones like SKYport (Heathrow).
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Graham. Forum Moderator Reach for your meter before you reach for your soldering iron. Last edited by AC/HL; 13th Jul 2014 at 5:45 pm. Reason: Thread split |
12th Jul 2014, 2:23 pm | #2 |
Octode
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
There were a few cunning attempts at keeping the Letters going as long as poss; my favourite was the conflict between HAMpstead and Hammersmith - they called Hammersmith RIVerside, clever.
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12th Jul 2014, 3:37 pm | #3 |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
It didn't quite die.
The numbers in the STD code sometimes correlate with names. 0532 (Leeds) translates as 0LE2, I think 0LE1 was Leicester. |
12th Jul 2014, 4:21 pm | #4 |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
At the risk of dragging this even further OT, I always loved the fact that when Oxford's 0092 (0OX2) had to be changed to eliminate double zeros at the start of a code, the replacement code of 0865 could be interpreted as 0UN5 for "University".
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12th Jul 2014, 5:08 pm | #5 | |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
Quote:
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13th Jul 2014, 12:16 pm | #6 |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
I've just been here over at the THG. I didn't realise that Workington 0900 used to be written as 0-W-O-0, as in figure, letter, letter, figure. When I enquired on their newsgroup, it turns out that it was the normal way to express STD codes back in, and up to the 1960s.
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13th Jul 2014, 4:07 pm | #7 |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
I too found the THG discussion on this matter enlightening. Like you, I had never come across this way of representing exchange codes. I had only encountered exchange names (e.g. Workington) and all-numeric representations (0900), but never the hybrid form (0WO0). For completeness, perhaps I should say it was mentioned that the earlier version of the "hybrid" used alphabetic "O" rather than zero, so OWO0.
By the way, I think we have a ripe candidate here for splitting - an interesting discussion (starting from #7) that has rather derailed the original thread.
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13th Jul 2014, 7:26 pm | #8 |
Tetrode
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Re: AFN Telephone Codes
Wasn't the publicity campaign for all-figure dialling ANN? I think this ran in the early seventies when the original three letter codes started to be withdrawn.
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13th Jul 2014, 7:57 pm | #9 | |
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Re: AFN Telephone Codes
Quote:
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14th Jul 2014, 12:26 pm | #10 | |
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Re: AFN Telephone Codes
Quote:
Director areas had numeric codes 01, 021, 031, 041 etc Whilst they did have an Alphanumerics significance i.e 021 = 0B1=Birmingham, 031=0E1=Edinburgh - they were never shown that way. After the Director area STD code you dialled the first three letters of the exchange name plus the four digit number. STD Codes were shown Alpha-Numerically until the middle of 1966 when STD code books started to show STD codes in their all numeric i.e. Leeds had become 0532 and Director areas like London started shown exchanges which had 'All Figure Numbering' (i.e.no exchange name to dial the first three letters of). See attached scan. Then in 1968 the STD Codebooks announce that 'exchange names' in Director areas have gone and list the Numeric codes. See attached scan. In fact a number of London exchanges had had their codes changes - WHItehall (i.e. 944 when dialled) had become 930 xxxx as part of 'sectorisation' . So the term 'All Figure Numbering' came into being in 1966 when the Alph-Numeric STD codes were dropped. But letters were still shown for use in dialling exchanges in Director areas until 1968. Exchange names were still shown with their appropriate codes in Director areas but eventually were dropped and the numerical codes effectively became part of the number. Now even exchange names aren't shown in what is left of the BT telephone directories ! Join us on CNet - we still have exchange names! |
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14th Jul 2014, 1:02 pm | #11 | |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
Quote:
Leicester used to be 0533. Anorak alert: http://strowger-net.telefoonmuseum.c..._earlystd.html
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....__________ ....|____||__|__\_____ .=.| _---\__|__|_---_|. .........O..Chris....O |
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14th Jul 2014, 4:14 pm | #12 |
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Re: Telephone No. 150. I think it's vintage.
I understand there was a hierarchy to all this because of exchange equipment holding times and cost. The highest anticipated traffic demands started low on the dial with codes advancing as anticipated traffic decreased: 0WO2 for Wolverhampton; 0WO3 for Worthing; 0YO4 York; 0WO5 Worcester... 0WO8 Wolverton, then finally 0WO0 Workington.
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