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Old red phone boxes


Guest tsavo

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Guest Tigeratplay

....what about the K8 's around the 70's-80's ??????? I think a few were on the Norfolk Park estate .....

I remember that style of kiosk when I was a kid in the 1970's and that door was really difficult to open. Didn't they used to have mirrors in and a *** ash tray, too..? Goodness, times changed!

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Guest Tigeratplay

The old pre-payment button A & B payphones were a little before my time with PO/BT. 700 type pay on answer boxes were introduced from 1959 onwards to coincide with STD. Button A & B boxes were just a single fee type of device where the the action of pressing button A merely dropped the money into the cashbox and removed a short from the mouthpiece allowing you to talk. Therefore there were a few fiddles to avoid payment, one of which Vox has mentioned, there was also a way of "back dialling" this was something to do with allowing the dial to return from zero (10 pulses) back to 5 this would give you 5 (back to 6 would give you 4 ) etc. This was to do with how the box dealt with zero as "0" was for the operator. As I said before my time. Also there was some sort of fiddle with poking a lolly stick through the coin slot and moving the coin bar, this fooled the box into thinking you had put some coins in. I am sure some of our members with a few more years under their belts may be able to elaborate. Another thing about these boxes, if you made a long distance call via the operator she would tell you to deposit say 2 shillings, as you put in your money each coin would strike a bell and the operator would count the dings and would be able to tell what coins you entered.

I remember the old red kiosk in our village, now gone. It took 2p for local calls and 10p for national calls. Something must ave malfunctioned once, as for many weeks the deposited 2 pence would end up in the return coin slot on insertion when the rapid pips were heard, but your call was still connected. Didn't work for 10p slot, so if you wanted to dial long distance for free, you could do, as long as were on the ball at keep shoving the 2p back through the mechanisim every few seconds. Was like shelling peas, but we got free calls! Needless to say, ques for that particular box were long!

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Telephone Box Challenge? Find one with a phone inside that is intact and still takes coins! That is a challenge!

Better still, - can you find one that takes pre-decimal £sd coins?

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I remember as a kid to make a phone call was 4 pennies but

what were the letters for behind the numbers on the dial?

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I remember as a kid to make a phone call was 4 pennies but

what were the letters for behind the numbers on the dial?

Stuart0742 is the man to answer that one.

I think they were a pre STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing) system of dialing beyond the local exchange without an operator having to connect you through (so you could, for example, dial SHE for Sheffield instead of it's 0742 (now 0114) STD code.

I may be wrong on that but Stuart will know for sure.

If it came up on a boozer quiz question I would leave that one to him. ;-)

They certainly were not there to allow you to send SMS text messages as they do today. lol

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Stuart0742 is the man to answer that one.

I think they were a pre STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialing) system of dialing beyond the local exchange without an operator having to connect you through (so you could, for example, dial SHE for Sheffield instead of it's 0742 (now 0114) STD code.

I may be wrong on that but Stuart will know for sure.

If it came up on a boozer quiz question I would leave that one to him. ;-)

They certainly were not there to allow you to send SMS text messages as they do today. lol

Preperation for sending SMS messsages, lol

The numbers/letters are the same now, as used on mobiles

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Preperation for sending SMS messsages, lol

The numbers/letters are the same now, as used on mobiles

But what were the letters used for?

Is my suggestion correct or not?

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STD was introduced to Sheffield in October 1966 with the opening of the new telephone exchange on Charter Row. Before that any long distance calls to & from Sheffield had to be connected manually by an operator. The STD code for Sheffield was 0SH2, 0CH6 for Chesterfield, 0CH4 for Chester, 0RO9 for Rotherham and so on (see the pattern?). This use of letters in the STD code was abandoned later in the 1960s but 0SH2 is 0742 etc & so the digits dialled were unchanged.

At no time was SHE used as the dialling code for Sheffield. Sheffield exchanges eg Ranmoor, Attercliffe, Beauchief etc (about 10 in all) made up the Sheffield linked numbering scheme. For example if a subscriber on Beauchief exchange (a 36xxxx number) called a subscriber on Firth Park exchange (a 38xxxx number) they simply dialled 381234 or whatever ie no dialling code preceded the called subscribers number. Similar linked numbering schemes were used in cities like Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester. However this scheme was not used for larger cities like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow & of course, London. These cities were served by director exchanges. For example MAYfair, MONarch & WHItehall were exchanges in the London director area. If ,say, a subscriber on MAYfair exchange dialled WHItehall 1212 (older contributors will remember that number), the WHI digits were translated by a director in MAYfair exchange into the routing digits to reach WHItehall exchange. The 1212 digits were then dialled into the WHItehall exchange by the director. Of course subscribers were quite unaware of the translation process. This way of using letters as exchange codes was abandoned because of the limited number of meaningful exchange names.

Even before STD was introduced it was possible to make calls to places like Chesterfield & Barnsley from Sheffield without going through the operator. A 2-digit code, say, 83 was dialled before, say, a Barnsley number. However a call from Chesterfield to Barnsley would have to have gone through the operator & was classed as a trunk call.

Regarding tapping calls: it was very easy to do this on coinbox phones that were served by the obsolescent Siemens 16 exchanges. These were still in existence in Sheffield right up to the end of the 1960s eg Woodseats, Ranmoor. This equipment was very old & would tolerate a very leisurely tapping speed (no need to try to synchronise with the dial speed.)

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