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This is most unusual and exceptional. “One” was reserved for telephone services such as the operator, 100 etc. The first numbers allocated to subscribers were 2 something. I’d love to find out more about this.
I'd assume that dialling "1" would get you through to the local exchange, which would be the post office in a lot of small places, bearing in mind that post office and telecoms were one and the same thing.
Regarding short phone numbers, when we moved here it was all three-digit numbers. Ours was 661 initially and it was changed to 668 shortly after we moved in - I've no idea why, because the previous residents moved away to a different area. I'm not even sure if number portability was a thing back then!
The village police station was allocated 222 and I recall that a lot of rural stations had "all the twos" assigned. The main police station in town was 3101, though - I presume that the current 101 number has some connection with that. "Town numbers" were either four- or five-digit, with the latter beginning with "4"; when the area went over to six-digit numbers, four-digit numbers were prefixed with 54 and five-digit numbers had a "5" added.
As each local exchange went over to six-figure numbers, the old "local" dialling codes were still used, but a zero was inserted between the former local code and the subscriber number; thus 83 xxx became 830xxx, 85 xxx became 850xxx and so forth. Prior to that, anyone calling from outwith the area would have to dial the STD code, the local code and then the subscriber number (0343, then 83 and xxx in my case).
With all the data on tape drives remorselessly whirring backwards and forwards . Input and output by punch cards. Masses of typists punching input cards.
Someone on here may know exactly what the was size of the memory of the original T.O.P.S. computer at Blandford House but I'm sure it was tiny by comparison to even a basic laptop of today.
An internet search shows that 2 IBM System/370 mainframes were initially used when BR introduced TOPS in 1973, each with 4MB of RAM. Tiny indeed compared to that of basic laptops today with RAM in the 4-16GB range!
There was another way to make trunk calls without dialling 0 to start..
It probably counts as fraud, so it was my friend that did it. To call the surrounding towns there were local exchange codes different from the trunk ones which, in a call box, were only charged at the local rate. To make a trunk call at local rate an example would be if you wanted to call a Scampton (Lincs) exchange number from Northampton you dialled the Leicester local code number, followed by the local code number from Leicester to Lincoln and then the local code number from Lincoln to Scampton. It was a bit faint when you got through, though.
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Remember being told about that in student days and was never sure whether or not it was an urban myth. In my case, with calls home being Bristol - Edinburgh it would have been a tall order. Home then moved and one local code sufficed anyway!
I spent my early childhood in an old stone terraced house with no power sockets and there my mother plugged an iron into one of these. No problem at night, lamp in the other socket. At least 10 amps down a tiny twisted flex from the ceiling. When I later did physics at school I realised the flaw, and also understood what was making the smell of fish (overheating bakelite, & it's a dodgy gas)
Speaking of irons - the time when they were supplied with a power cord long enough to use in the way a typical punter would want to use an iron.
I might buy a new steam iron every 10 or 12 years, but each time I do the power cord gets shorter. The latest specimen has a cord barely long enough to reach from the wall plug to the ironing board (looking at you Tefal). I suppose the Chinese manufacturer gets to save a fraction of a p per unit.
Luckily since I've retired, my weekly ironing burden has greatly reduced. Hopefully I'll never need to buy one of the things again.
"Old fashioned" pocket diaries which, at one time at least, had a small handy pencil secreted down their spine and a little ribbon acting as a bookmark. The classier ones had a lot of "useful information" outwith the main diary section. The diary itself showed you things like the state of the moon (full or otherwise) and specific days with a notation of being a holiday or attributed to a particular saint etc.
Didn't the really classy ones have a table showing vintages of different styles of wine, indicating which years were good, bad or indifferent? So one could impress colleagues & clients with the "correct" choice of vintage whilst dining out. Or better still, look askance and tut when Colin from the Newcastle Office orders a clearly unsatisfactory vintage.
Bit of a niche one regarding telephone numbers - but the phone company blithely distributing "memorable" numbers to random new subscribers as they worked down the list.
These days, any phone numbers which might be of value to a business customer's marketing efforts (say 01xxx 555666) would most likely be 'monetised' by way of a premium charged for providing a 'mnemonic' number.
An aunt & uncle once got a new phone line and were assigned the number 54321. Problem was - in the 1970s or 80s, there was a chocolate bar named '54321', which had a TV advert with its own catchy jingle. So, most evenings, the phone would ring; at the other end there would be a bit of introductory giggling, then a trio or so of youthful voices (probably squashed into some red K6 phone box) would all sing "Five - Four - Three - Two - One!".
I'd assume that dialling "1" would get you through to the local exchange, which would be the post office in a lot of small places, bearing in mind that post office and telecoms were one and the same thing.
Regarding short phone numbers, when we moved here it was all three-digit numbers. Ours was 661 initially and it was changed to 668 shortly after we moved in - I've no idea why, because the previous residents moved away to a different area. I'm not even sure if number portability was a thing back then!
The village police station was allocated 222 and I recall that a lot of rural stations had "all the twos" assigned. The main police station in town was 3101, though - I presume that the current 101 number has some connection with that. "Town numbers" were either four- or five-digit, with the latter beginning with "4"; when the area went over to six-digit numbers, four-digit numbers were prefixed with 54 and five-digit numbers had a "5" added.
As each local exchange went over to six-figure numbers, the old "local" dialling codes were still used, but a zero was inserted between the former local code and the subscriber number; thus 83 xxx became 830xxx, 85 xxx became 850xxx and so forth. Prior to that, anyone calling from outwith the area would have to dial the STD code, the local code and then the subscriber number (0343, then 83 and xxx in my case).
An aunt & uncle once got a new phone line and were assigned the number 54321. Problem was - in the 1970s or 80s, there was a chocolate bar named '54321', which had a TV advert with its own catchy jingle. So, most evenings, the phone would ring; at the other end there would be a bit of introductory giggling, then a trio or so of youthful voices (probably squashed into some red K6 phone box) would all sing "Five - Four - Three - Two - One!".
The Video+ numbers used an algorithm to encode date, time, channel number, and programme length. So if two programmes had exactly the same details (and I think it would have to be yearly rather than 6 months) then it would have the same number.
On that subject, one of my former neighbours (an elderly lady now no longer with us) used to phone asking if I could pop over to look at her VCR whenever she had a problem with it. She phoned one day saying it hadn’t recorded the film she wanted so I went round, couldn’t see anything obviously wrong. Asked if she was sure she’d entered the video+ code correctly. Yes. Said I’d do a test recording and she gave me the Radio Times……”Where did you get this Radio Times from”?? “Friday, whilst I was at my sisters for the weekend”…..her sister lived in Belfast so she had the Northern Ireland Radio Times, and the film had started half an hour later on BBC1 NI compared to the rest of the network, so she’d used the wrong code number.
Speaking of irons - the time when they were supplied with a power cord long enough to use in the way a typical punter would want to use an iron.
I might buy a new steam iron every 10 or 12 years, but each time I do the power cord gets shorter. The latest specimen has a cord barely long enough to reach from the wall plug to the ironing board (looking at you Tefal). I suppose the Chinese manufacturer gets to save a fraction of a p per unit.
Luckily since I've retired, my weekly ironing burden has greatly reduced. Hopefully I'll never need to buy one of the things again.
Didn't the really classy ones have a table showing vintages of different styles of wine, indicating which years were good, bad or indifferent? So one could impress colleagues & clients with the "correct" choice of vintage whilst dining out. Or better still, look askance and tut when Colin from the Newcastle Office orders a clearly unsatisfactory vintage.
Bit of a niche one regarding telephone numbers - but the phone company blithely distributing "memorable" numbers to random new subscribers as they worked down the list.
These days, any phone numbers which might be of value to a business customer's marketing efforts (say 01xxx 555666) would most likely be 'monetised' by way of a premium charged for providing a 'mnemonic' number.
I was most surprised when setting up my landline connection in Germany (a few years ago now, but still this century) to be asked which number I wanted. Obviously it had to be one that was still available but other than that I had free rein.
The reason may be the result of a campaign by Dame E Rantzen on her consumer programme. If an electric kettle has a long flex it might, if used carelessly, hang down from the edge of the worktop in a loop and a short child wandering in the kitchen might grab it and as a result pull the scalding contents over themselves.
She was successful in having this change made (possibly by legislation) and it might well have applied to all electric appliances that have stored heat.
interestingly I did hear on another consumer programme examples of very short kettle cables causing accidents ...
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An internet search shows that 2 IBM System/370 mainframes were initially used when BR introduced TOPS in 1973, each with 4MB of RAM. Tiny indeed compared to that of basic laptops today with RAM in the 4-16GB range!
You've triggered a faint memory there - B.R. were very proud that it was the latest /370 - the banks and commerce were still on /360....
Talking of RAM; B.R. Freight Marketing were forward in the adoption of 'desk-top mini-computers' and their RAM was only big enough for little more than the operating system. The program - what is now called 'software package' of course - was on a 5 1/4" floppy disc and data was stored on another floppy disc. You inserted the program disc into the computer, it did some processing using the available RAM and then you removed the disc and replaced it with the data one.The reverse and then repeated because of the limitations of computer memory. It was all very polite; when the processing program required you to swap over discs the screen message read 'You may change disc now, if you wish'. Of course, if you choose not to, you would be staring at that message until the end of time
The reason may be the result of a campaign by Dame E Rantzen on her consumer programme. If an electric kettle has a long flex it might, if used carelessly, hang down from the edge of the worktop in a loop and a short child wandering in the kitchen might grab it and as a result pull the scalding contents over themselves.
She was successful in having this change made (possibly by legislation) and it might well have applied to all electric appliances that have stored heat.
interestingly I did hear on another consumer programme examples of very short kettle cables causing accidents ...
Maximum lead lengths are defined for quite a few domestic appliances now as recommended by Underwriters Laboratories (UL). This is to reduce the hazards of unnecessarily long leads, especiallly in a kitchen or other work area. Since these appliances were first introduced and they became commonplace in homes, the wiring of homes has become more comprehensive to accommodate them. A typical kitchen in the '50s would have a single outlet on the 'cooker' switch panel and maybe 2 or three single sockets elsewhere. Other rooms might only have one or two sockets, so devices such as heater or irons would have longer leads to allow their use a short distance from the outlet. Moder dwelling have many outlets in almost every room so that appliances do not have the trip hazards and other risks previously encountered.
The recommended length of a kettle lead is 1m and 1.5m or 2m for most others. The exceptions include vacuum cleaners and other mobil appliances where there deployment is normally task realted and the leads doesn't represent a continuous hazard.
Fax machines. I seem to recall these being quite common 20 years ago but are pretty much extinct now in the UK. Though I did read they are still quite common in Japan.
‘Real’ football boots, not the pink carpet slippers modern players use.
When I was a child back in the 1950’s the boots were thick leather reaching above the ankle with massive hard toecaps. They weighed a ton even when clean. When wet and covered in mud they were ‘really’ heavy. No matter how much you applied dubbin they still soaked up water like blotting paper. The laces were about 8/10 feet long and wrapped both underneath and behind the boots. The studs were nailed on so there was no replacement studs for different playing surfaces. Having said that the surface was either a muddy bog or frozen solid. As a child you needed your boots 2 sizes too big, as if you bought the correct size by the time you’d broken them in they’d be too small.
I’d have loved to see Messi & Co play in those boots
An aunt & uncle once got a new phone line and were assigned the number 54321. Problem was - in the 1970s or 80s, there was a chocolate bar named '54321', which had a TV advert with its own catchy jingle. So, most evenings, the phone would ring; at the other end there would be a bit of introductory giggling, then a trio or so of youthful voices (probably squashed into some red K6 phone box) would all sing "Five - Four - Three - Two - One!".
When my father and stepmother moved from one home to another in Bromley they took over the London number 460 4321. No problem until Sainsbury's changed the location of their local store and, on asking for/demanding a memorable telephone number from BT were allocated 464 4321, 464 being an 'overflow' suffix when the 460 numbers all got used up. In those days supermarkets advertised their phone numbers widely in local papers, etc, and J. Sainsbury decided to use my parents' number, resulting in calls at all hours of the day and evening, which both frustrated the callers and made my parents' lives a misery. My father asked the local store to desist, but they ignored his complaint and blithely continued until, after a couple of months, BT allocated them a new, unmemorable number. Lo and behold, their original number was soon in the telephone directory as the 'official' one for Sainsbury's, their intention all along. Ever since, I've taken with a pinch of salt any press spin about the enhanced ethics of that company in comparison with their rivals.
There used to be a sandwich shop in Highgate that thought that my phone number was their phone number - it was written on the shop front and on every listings site online, so I used to come home from work and find loads of messages from people phoning their order in. No wonder it closed down really.
Booking cottage holidays from short text-only adverts in Daltons Weekly.
Widows (typically) taking-in lodgers: often mature men who seemed to drift around, with uncertain back stories.
References to ‘the handicapped’ - London Buses leaflet from 1988 I’m just reading.
Hitch hiking - unless you have trade plates.
Leaving school on your 16th birthday, if you wished, perfectly legitimately. (But quite controversial if you then presented yourself for sixth form enrolment at the same place in September.)
My sister's female friend, well into her eighties, seems to be contemplating such a move, but she has history in this regard. She has never learned, so why should she now? Her daughter, living a mere two miles away, seems as unconcerned as ever.
That’s a good one.
Back in the late 1960‘s early 1970’s I frequently hitchhiked, especially late on a Saturday night after I’d missed the last bus home from Stafford. No thought was given back then as to if it was safe or not. You just did it.
On motorway slip roads it was a common sight to see hitchhikers holding up pieces of cardboard with a destination on them hoping for a lift. This has got me thinking, apart from the perceived dangers of hitchhiking, is there now any law against it, as it’s been many years since I saw a hitchhiker?
I started working for IBM in Portsmouth in 1984; they put me up in a hotel for a week or two to get me started, but after that I had to make my own arrangements. So an upstairs room in a house in North End owned by a - I presume - widow and instructions to leave 50p when I had a bath. I stayed for a few months until I found my own place; she was probably on a reliable source of income from “professional” people.
That’s a good one.
Back in the late 1960‘s early 1970’s I frequently hitchhiked, especially late on a Saturday night after I’d missed the last bus home from Stafford. No thought was given back then as to if it was safe or not. You just did it.
On motorway slip roads it was a common sight to see hitchhikers holding up pieces of cardboard with a destination on them hoping for a lift. This has got me thinking, apart from the perceived dangers of hitchhiking, is there now any law against it, as it’s been many years since I saw a hitchhiker?
I used to hitch from Uni in Leeds to Shenfield in Essex, even in the early 90s. As you say, the entrance to the M1 often had a small line of people waiting for their turn at hitching.
I remember, once on the way back up, someone failed to drop us off at Watford Gap and only realised once they started up the M6 towards Birmingham. They dropped us off at the hard shoulder and we intended to cross the M6 to get back to the M1 Northbound. We got as far as the central reservation and decided that things were a bit hairy to cross the next three lanes, so we walked down the central reservation until we got to a bridge which we shuffled down the inside of and made our way back to the side of the M1 (not at a junction). We stood there for about 15 minutes until a lorry driver picked us up and took us to the next junction before the police did.
The junction has been largely remodelled now, but I vividly remember being stood on the M1's hard shoulder next to an old Roadline van body in a field, which I still occasionally catch a glimpse of when I pass up and down that way.
If any of my 20-something kids came home telling me this story, I'd be distinctly unimpressed.
I have picked up hitchers in the last few years though, admittedly, the last one was a bunch of students on a charity hitch from Sheffield.
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A couple of other things that I can remember that would now seem to be from a different age...
From the age of about 5 upwards, on Grand National day, my Mum would send me to the betting shop with 50p and a note, and I would have to ask people going in if they would put a 25p each way bet on for us, as per the instructions in the note.
Technical Drawing O-Level (1986) - With Pencils, and Tee-Squares, etc.
Computer Printouts on that Green-and-White lined wide paper with the sprocket holes at the sides. One of my friends' Dads was 'something big' in computers so we got a tour round his office in the Barbican and were all presented with a computer-graphic girlie calendar and a similar picture of Sean Connery
Page 3. Seems anachronistic and getting rid of it was seen as a leap forward for feminism, equality, and all that, but if you compare a cheeky pair of knockers in the paper to what people are constantly fed via their phones these days, I'm not sure we've gone in the right direction.
CB Radios. We might worry about teenagers talking to strangers on the internet these days, but talking to a random trucker passing within 10 miles of your house was just fine in the 80s...
One I remember from my childhood in the 80s but haven't seen since, a coach/bus chassis sans bodywork and interior being driven along a motorway by a driver sat in open and usually wearing a motorcycle crash helmet.
One I remember from my childhood in the 80s but haven't seen since, a coach/bus chassis sans bodywork and interior being driven along a motorway by a driver sat in open and usually wearing a motorcycle crash helmet…
Employers arranging Christmas parties for the children/grandchildren of their employees.
My grandfather worked for a large engineering corporate with offices on Euston Road, at which Christmas event a young Boy George sang. I found socialising a difficult skill, so being left in a hall with 150+ children unknown to me, playing musical chairs etc, was an ordeal or a valuable learning experience, depending on your point of view.
One I remember from my childhood in the 80s but haven't seen since, a coach/bus chassis sans bodywork and interior being driven along a motorway by a driver sat in open and usually wearing a motorcycle crash helmet.
Ah! The days when we made bus chassis and bodywork. There were some lengthy journeys for these chassis delivery drivers, such as Bristol Commercial Vehicles at Brislington to Eastern Coach Works at Lowestoft. AEC at Southall to Alexanders in Scotland can't have been much fun either.
I recall an afternoon of events that seemed to involve an unintended trip in a time machine.
Having dropped my car off at a semi-rural garage to check a fault, I walked into the nearest town to pick up a few things. After shopping, I realised that I had no phone with me so I went to a phone box to call the garage to check if my car was ready - and had to call the Operator to report a fault. When I got back to the garage, they handed me an invoice and asked me to send them a cheque, because their new card reader hadn't arrived. "We hope we got your address right", they commented, "because we looked it up in the Phone Book".
Continuing the phone numbers angle, my old landline ended in 0697, and there was a local shop which sold swimming pools and associated equipment, whose number ended in 0657, the remainder of the number being identical, I would occasionally get calls meant for them.
Ah! The days when we made bus chassis and bodywork. There were some lengthy journeys for these chassis delivery drivers, such as Bristol Commercial Vehicles at Brislington to Eastern Coach Works at Lowestoft. AEC at Southall to Alexanders in Scotland can't have been much fun either.
My father was a postman from 1970 until retirement and the social side of his sorting office was very well organised. At the time there were Christmas parties with Santa and presents,annual carnival floats and family coach trips to North Petherton carnival. It seemed to all die off by the early 80s.
Continuing the phone numbers angle, my old landline ended in 0697, and there was a local shop which sold swimming pools and associated equipment, whose number ended in 0657, the remainder of the number being identical, I would occasionally get calls meant for them.
My parents used to periodically get calls for a hotel in Edinburgh in the 80s. Our dialling code was 021, the Edinburgh code was 031, the rest of our phone number after the code was identical to the hotel's.
‘Real’ football boots, not the pink carpet slippers modern players use.
When I was a child back in the 1950’s the boots were thick leather reaching above the ankle with massive hard toecaps. They weighed a ton even when clean. When wet and covered in mud they were ‘really’ heavy. No matter how much you applied dubbin they still soaked up water like blotting paper. The laces were about 8/10 feet long and wrapped both underneath and behind the boots. The studs were nailed on so there was no replacement studs for different playing surfaces. Having said that the surface was either a muddy bog or frozen solid. As a child you needed your boots 2 sizes too big, as if you bought the correct size by the time you’d broken them in they’d be too small.
I’d have loved to see Messi & Co play in those boots
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