8/28/2023 0 Comments Phone pad lettersYes, there may have been a confusion with the prefixes used for long distance calls (that all start with '0', and maybe they would have been concerned about people repeatedly dialling '0'), but as far as I know, the use of '999' for emergency calls pre-dates the used of STD (subscriber trunk dialling), so that would not then have been a problem. In fact, with a bit of diligence, you could dial the phones without using the dials at all, but simply by tapping the appropriate number of pulses at the right frequency on the handset disconnect button (some early public phone boxes, supposedly allowed you to make phone calls without paying for them if you dialled the number in this way).Īfter I made the previous post, I too began to wonder that, and have not come up with a completely satisfactory answer. The main reason I can think of why they would not use the digit 1 for any letters (for any exchange dialling codes) is that back in the days of pulse dial telephones, particularly in the early days, the number you dialled was sent down as a number of pulses (whereas today it is by a series of tones), and the number 1 was represented by a single pulse, and it was too easy for a single pulse to be detected erroneously in consequence to a noise spike (this is also why the emergency services were 999, since the number 9 required 9 pulses, and were least likely to be confused with noise). I cannot imagine every country has exactly the same letter on the dial pad, since they do not have exactly the same alphabets (I have no idea how a Chinese phone pad looks like). The first two digits of my current area code is 58, and that just happens to match to the letters LU, and the local phone area is Luton (I did not live here in the days when we had names to our phone exchanges, so I am assuming the fact that 58 is LU is not coincidental, but I have only ever known it by the numeric area code). When I used to live in London (as a child) our phone number (within the London area) was a Maida Vale exchange, and the area code was 624, which if you look at the letters, M = 6, A = 2, I = 4, so the 624 area code represented the 'Mai' that is the start of Maida Vale. Oh dear, you youngsters don't remember the days when local exchanges had names.
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