On Apr 3, 7:08*pm, Charles Ellson wrote:
On Tue, 3 Apr 2012 02:58:45 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:



On Apr 3, 1:14*am, Charles Ellson wrote:
On Sun, 1 Apr 2012 12:33:21 -0700 (PDT), Stephen Furley

wrote:
On Apr 1, 6:15*pm, wrote:
On Apr 1, 6:20*am, wrote:

*Letters on dials were originally to aid in dialing exchange names, eg
PEnnsylvania 6-5000 instead of 736-5000. *The US gradually
transitioned to "All Number Calling" by 1980.

I wrote a reply to this, but for some reason Google Groups won't allow
me to send it. *I'll try to send it as a reply just to you, which may
be better since it's quite long, and off-topic for this group.-

The above came through fine. *Not sure why google rejected your other
reply.

An email won't work. *This thread has already gone way off topic, so
it probably won't hurt to post it publicly. *Others may find it of
interest. *Maybe break it up into parts. *Thanks.

(Trains and telecommunications have many 'connections' in that they're
both common carriers, some of telephone technology is used for
signalling, and trains always have been heavy users of
telecommunications, including development of their own networks.)

Your post which I was trying to reply to is on Google Groups, in both
uk.railway and misc.transport.rail.americas, but does not appear in
either group in Giganews; I don't know what's going on.

The reply which I tried to send earlier was:

Somewhat different here. *0 was not used for the operator, at least
not in my time, the operator was 100. 0 was used for subscriber trunk
dialing. *I think 0 may have been used for the operator in the early
days, but that was before my time. *Normal GPO dials did not have the
word 'Operator' on them.

Older (pre-1950s?) ones did.

That's interesting, I've got serveral No. 10 dials which must be
pre-1950s, but none have the word 'Operator', and I don't think I've
seen one which did; how common were they?

There is a drawing of one in :-http://www.britishtelephones.com/dials/dialbrit.html
which looks vaguely like it has come from an old Engineering
Instruction (the extra holes implying it belonged to a Dial No.10),
and a photograph in :-http://www.telephonesuk.co.uk/miscellaneous.htm

but I've not seen one in the wild. At a rough guess there would have
been little practical necessity once automatic exchanges became
commonplace, allowing the change to 0/O matching the style and
legibility of the other characters. I have a tele 150 with IIRC a
1940s refurbishment label which has the newer style. The 1939 N
diagram accompanying one of the other dials in the above photograph
also does not show the "L" fingerplate label with "operator" on it so
it would seem to have been discarded entirely (apart from any
surviving on telephones) by then.

The photograph is interesting; it seems to be older than the normal 10
dial as on my 232 and 150, but newer than the original 10 with the
small centre; I suspect it was short-lived. The drawing of the
B(righton) plate also has 'Operator, but the photograph of a very
similar looking Brighton dial does not. Some very early GPO dials
were made by Automtic Electric in the US, but this was before the 10
was introduced. I wonder if they copied the design of an old AE plate?