Call The Midwife Train Crash 13/02/22

[AM9]

@Peasmould. You may have a point.

Believe the standard ringing pattern in the U.S. is/was something like two seconds of ringing, followed by four seconds of silence.

In the U.K., it is/was 0.4 seconds ringing, followed by 0.2 seconds silence, followed by another 0.4 seconds ringing, and then two seconds of silence.

Not sure if this ever differed for local calls/long distance calls.

The speed did vary in the UK, especially as some ring tone generators were motor driven, the two cadence was the normal for exchange lines. However, PABX lines were often given single cadence rings for internal calls and double for 'outside' line connections, thus making it easy to determine whether ones family or a fellow worker was calling, (choose which one to ignore).

 

[yorksrob]

Sorry, this is off topic here, I know. It should be on a "Telephones UK" forum. But while we're talking about Call the Midwife, please does anyone know the answer to the technical accuracy question that has bothered me most? Wherever their telephones ring (Nonnatus House, Doctor Turner's surgery, private homes, etc.) they ring once, with equal pauses between (ring - pauuuuuuse - ring - pauuuuuuse ...).

Was that a London thing in the 60s? I grew up straddling two telephone companies in Yorkshire - Hull Telephones around Hull (where we started with a "party line") and GPO Telephones nearer to York. Every external phone I experienced had a double ring (ring - ring - pauuuuuuse - ring - ring -pauuuuuuse ...). The only phones I heard in the 1960s that rang like those in Call The Midwife were in the American TV shows, like Dick van Dyke and Perry Mason.

@Peasmould. You may have a point.

Believe the standard ringing pattern in the U.S. is/was something like two seconds of ringing, followed by four seconds of silence.

In the U.K., it is/was 0.4 seconds ringing, followed by 0.2 seconds silence, followed by another 0.4 seconds ringing, and then two seconds of silence.

Not sure if this ever differed for local calls/long distance calls.

I've not seen the said programme, but that would be a particularly shoddy piece of unrealistic prop sourcing. It always grates on me when I hear a non-authentic ring tone being used in lieu of the traditional UK "ring-ring".

 

[Peasmould]

Thanks Mcr Warrior. That's what I thought. Unless it really was different for London numbers, it almost seems like they went out of their way to get that wrong!

 

[DelW]

Thanks Mcr Warrior. That's what I thought. Unless it really was different for London numbers, it almost seems like they went out of their way to get that wrong!

I started working in an office in the then 081 code area (outer London) in the 1980s, which used a phone system that almost certainly dated from when the office was built in the 1950s. We had separate handsets for internal and external calls, which latter came always via the switchboard (no direct dial numbers). As alluded to by AM9, internal calls were single rings, which I always thought of as American style, but external calls were always the traditional British double ring.

Sometime in the 1990s we changed to a system with one handset for all calls, and could then dial out directly rather than placing all outgoing calls via the switchboard, but there were still no incoming direct line numbers when I left there in 2006. Different times!

 

[Trackman]

I've not seen the said programme, but that would be a particularly shoddy piece of unrealistic prop sourcing. It always grates on me when I hear a non-authentic ring tone being used in lieu of the traditional UK "ring-ring".

I bet the ‘ring ring’ was dubbed.

 

[Ralph Ayres]

I was indirectly responsible for London Underground's internal phone system changing from a long single ring to the more usual "ring-ring" in the mid-1980s. We started replacing extension bells on stations with shrill electronic ringers, and the Fire Brigade pointed out that the resulting sound was confusingly similar to the emergency whistles used by their crews. Changing to the familiar "ring-ring" cadence (fortunately easy as the phone system had just been upgraded to a fancy digital system) made it more obvious that it was a phone ringing.

 

[Peasmould]

Thank you additionally, DelW, Trackman and Ralph! As these were calls coming from outside, it makes it seem highly likely Call The Midwife has it wrong. It just seems weird, though. I can't imagine why they would go out of their way to use something other than the standard "ring-ring".