A BT Telephone Box!

Way back in the day, before the advent of mobile phones, etc the only way to communicate with your loved one was the BT phone box out there on the high street.

On a regular basis, and at a planned time, we would talk, often passionately, about how we felt at the time.

Does anyone else remember how it was?

Any funny stories?

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

If you tapped out the number wanted on the handset rest by pressings and releasing the cradle, you could make free phone calls

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

I remember those Ted.

Dialling numbers instead of pushing buttons, and the buttons A to get through, and B to get your money back - or was it the other way round?

Gosh, that seems another world now, doesn't it.

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

Ha ha, I just about remember them. My first job was a GPO telephonist . A lot of the areas still had those at the same time.
Two things will stay in my mind. One was that people calling long distance would always make a 'personal ' call, which was timed and paid for once the person receiving the call answered the phone. All these call were done through the GPO Operator service.

So, being in a city, we had many calls (personal) from journalists who would be phoning their head office in London, to give an account of their story of the day. That was interesting to listen to. (Yes, we did listen in )

The other was calls to Southern Ireland. They too would be 'personal' calls, but the difference was that the telephones over there were mostly in the grocers shop or the pub. So by the time the shopkeeper or the publican had run up the village to get the said person and the said person had run all the way down to the grocers or the pub, quite a long time had passed and they were all half dead and poor Aunty Mary would be wheezing away trying to get her breath back.

We had call going through to Convents too some of those were also quite interesting.

We had to monitor the calls so that we knew when it had finished.

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

Bakelite, a once in a lifetime experience.

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

To make unchallengeable excuses.

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

Not forgetting shared service lines for houses , pressing the button on the phone to get dial tone. We had that in our first house in 1972

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

Remember those. Didn't realise they were so late .

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

Within a few years all the telephone boxes will disappear from the streets. A couple of years later, so will post boxes. It's a shame, but it's a sign of the times.

Will the game of dominoes still be in existence in 10-20 years time?

Re: A BT Telephone Box!

The GPO never put in enough copper, I worked in planning for a while and the suburban planning fill was something like 5%. Average people just didn't have phones so as people became more affluent shared service made the most of the scarce copper available - certainly every house phone installed in the 60s where I worked was shared service - businesses paid more and got better service.

I was amazed when I came to Australia in the 1960s and nearly every house and flat had a phone line - line rental was peanuts. Shared service was unheard of (though in the bush you might have five stations hanging off one pair of wires from a manual exchange).

What was interesting was that the telephone line invariably came in underground and the power came in overhead (mine still does) whereas in the UK it was the other way round.

Some communications technology has come and gone in my lifetime, some has just gone. My last job in the GPO on microwave radio is no more neither is step by step switching. Telephone exchanges have gone from being floors and floors of noisy equipment to a silent box in the corner.

These days I only have fibre for my internet and only use a mobile phone for calls.

I can now ring anywhere in the world instantly for no extra cost yet one of my first jobs in an exchange was soldering the grading for GRACIE, the heart of the then 'new' STD which would allow a sub to call people in other parts of the country without going through an operator. If you were calling overseas you had to book a call, it cost an arm and a leg and it lasted exactly three minutes. How times have changed - and for the better.

All that and I haven't mentioned Telstar and Eurovision