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Charles Ellson

On Mon, 2 Apr 2012 19:07:30 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Apr 2, 8:39*pm, bobharvey wrote:
On Apr 1, 1:08*am, wrote: Did the letters* on British telephone dials always correspond to
those of US dials?

No, see below. *As far as I recall the US, Canada, & the Philippines
were the only ones who used the US system, but ICBW.

I heard some countries may have had the Q and O in different
positions.

we had O & Q on the zero. *Nice photo athttp://www.1900s.org.uk/1940s50s-domestic-phones.htm

Ok, so when cell phones came out widely, did Britain convert to that
scheme?

When they first came out, the allocation of letters to the numbers on
a keypad was AFAIR deprecated in Europe due to the previous lack of
uniformity.

What about older landline Touch Tone and rotary phones--did
the dial ring have to be converted?

No, they stayed as they were. Fixed telephones outwith the "director
areas" (those like Greater London, Glasgow etc. which used the first
three letters of the exchange as the code and where the exchanges used
translation) did not have letters except by accident and the letter
codes were not officially used after the late 1960s. Push button
telephones only came into general use in the 1980s with numbers only.

I'm pretty sure Britain used exchange names as the US did. When did
Britain go to all number calling?

see above

(The last US city 'converted' in
1980, but it took a long time for old habits and signage to die.)
Then, businesses used the letters to give themselves memorable phone
numbers, such as TAXICAB.

In the Greater London area many exchange codes changed due to a
"cunning plan" to route calls via tandem exchanges determined by the
first two digits but that idea was ruined by the increase in telephone
installations and traffic running too far ahead of it and modern
electronics making it unnecessary. This meant that a significant
proportion of the old names would have been ineffective. Re-use of
letters only came back as a consequence of their later standardised
proliferation on mobiles, some imported telephones and telephones
requiring letter input for e.g. the descriptions for stored numbers;
one potential consequence is the confusion of "0" with "O" or "1"
with" "I" and use of letters (other than as a crude keyboard
substitute) is generally the result of advertisers trying to be
"clever". Basic telephones typically only have numbers or have rather
small letters.