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Thomas Farely

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His knowledge of telecommunications has served, most notably, the American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine and The History Channel.
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« Letter Prefixes or EXchange Names | | Mobile Prefixes »

January 03, 2006

Posted by Tom Farley & Mark van der Hoek at 11:27 PM

London Exchange Names in 1916

Britain had some wonderful sounding exchange names: BR, Brixton; HS, Hammersmith; MA, Mayfair; P, Paddington, and so on. The table and information on the left is from the ultimate Strowger site: http://www.seg.co.uk/telecomm/automat2.htm. Strowgers and their kin were early automatic telephone switches. The chart on the right is from Laidlaw and Grinstead's article The Telephone Service of Large Cities, with Special Reference to London, presented before the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London on May 15, 1919. Printed later in the IEE Journal, Volume 57. (1919)







































The Mnemonics System


It was thought that people would have problems
remembering seven digit numbers (3 exchange + 4 subscriber) so
a system of allocating letters to the dial to make area mnemonics
was developed. Each exchange was then given a code according
to the location, as closely as possible. The original British
lettering scheme was as follows :

1 Not Allocated 6 MN
2 ABC 7 PRS
3 DEF 8 TUV
4 GHI 9 WXY
5 JKL 0 0 (Operator)
Some Examples :

BARnet (227)

EALing (325)

HENdon (436)

KINgston (546)

MILl Hill (645)

PUTney (788)

VICtoria (842)

 The London telephone area


Click
here for a much larger picture of the above

The Telephone Name EXchange Project by Robert Crowe (click here to go there)

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