Martin Underwood wrote:
I know that initially the changover of letter occurred on 1 January, until
they realised that this caused a rush in car orders just as garages and
distributors were returning from their Christmas holidays. I believe the
change to August-to-July "years" was in 1966. So does that mean that:

A, B, C ran from Jan-Dec
D ran from Jan-Jul
E onwards ran from Aug-Jul

making D a short "year"?

More or less, but E was the short year, and the changeover in 67.

London's use of A suffixes didn't extend to buses - there were never
any A reg Routemasters until some got re-registered when the original
numbers got valuable.

But Aldershot and District did have A reg buses, and I don't think
they were registered in London.

Anyone know why Northern Ireland never adopted any of the year-letter
formats. I'd have thought the army would have wanted a unified system so
that British soldiers' private cars were not quite so obviously different
from Northern Irish residents' cars, so as to lessen the chance of them
being IRA targets.

I think it was for compatibility with the rest of Ireland, though it
continued after the Republic went over to a new system in the late
'80s. I think they use the same system as the rest of the UK now.

Disclaimer: I didn't look any of the above up.

Colin McKenzie

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...
"Charlie Pearce" wrote in
message ...
On Fri, 31 Dec 2004 23:07:32 +0000, Clive Page
wrote:


Going off at a tangent, slightly, how are 07xxx mobile phone codes
allocated: did different networks (Vodafone, one2one etc) buy blocks of
codes and allocate from them, or are the numbers allocated completely at
random? In other words, for a given code (eg 07748) are all numbers with
that code connected via the same provider?


Numbers were assigned in blocks. I think that telcos got one or more 07xxx
codes, so each block would potentially contain 999,999 numbers.

However a few years ago (?about the same time that London went to 020)
mobile number portability was introduced - when you go from one mobile
operator to another you can take the number with you.

This is a similar position to fixed lines. There are time limits within
which the 'giving' telco has to pass all the necessary information to the
'receiving' telco, to enable them to take over the number.

regards

Stephen

Huge wrote:

Actually, the A/B boxes used "gongs" in the coin feed mechanism, so
that the operator could hear the coins running in. You're confusing
them with the later mechanical boxes, where inserting the coin wound
up a clockwork mechanism which as it unwound put 5K ohm loops across
the line, which could be automatically counted by a piece of equipment
in the exchange.

Cooo.... fascinating! Is there a decent web site out there which explains
the mechanisms involved in the old callboxes?

Colin McKenzie ) gurgled happily, sounding much
like they were saying :

Anyone know why Northern Ireland never adopted any of the year-letter
formats. I'd have thought the army would have wanted a unified system
so that British soldiers' private cars were not quite so obviously
different from Northern Irish residents' cars, so as to lessen the
chance of them being IRA targets.

I think it was for compatibility with the rest of Ireland, though it
continued after the Republic went over to a new system in the late
'80s. I think they use the same system as the rest of the UK now.

No, they're still their own sweet way. There's no "space" in the current UK
system for any NI regi offices - besides, they don't even use DVLA - they
use their own registration authority.

Martin Underwood wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:


I know that initially the changover of letter occurred on 1 January, until
they realised that this caused a rush in car orders just as garages and
distributors were returning from their Christmas holidays. I believe the
change to August-to-July "years" was in 1966. So does that mean that:

A, B, C ran from Jan-Dec
D ran from Jan-Jul
E onwards ran from Aug-Jul

making D a short "year"?

I think it was E that was the short year, if my memory serves me well.

Anyone know why Northern Ireland never adopted any of the year-letter
formats. I'd have thought the army would have wanted a unified system so
that British soldiers' private cars were not quite so obviously different
from Northern Irish residents' cars, so as to lessen the chance of them
being IRA targets.

At the time, in the early 1960s, it had its own government at Stormont,
and was nowhere near running out of registrations, so no need to.

My husband (who comes from Northern Ireland) can still tell you where a
car with a NI registration comes from, and even I know a few of them: IW
is/was County L'derry, OI was Belfast (city), IJ was County Tyrone, I
think..... Anything with an I or a Z in it was either Northern Ireland
or the Republic.

Nowadays, of course, the Republic of Ireland has its own system, with a
number, a letter-code indicating the county of origin, and the year in
full.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005

Colin McKenzie wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:

I think it was for compatibility with the rest of Ireland, though it
continued after the Republic went over to a new system in the late '80s.
I think they use the same system as the rest of the UK now.

Not as far as I know - I think they are still on 3 letters/4 numbers.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005

Clive D. W. Feather wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:

No such plans (I really can't see London needing more than 80 million
phone *numbers*).

I can - although now we have broadband, the idea of two lines per
household, one for the computer and one for the phone, isn't going to
happen - although what about one's television, which increasingly needs
to use the phone lines to pay for download movies & so on?

The thing is, it's as well to have that capacity in reserve - after all,
40 years ago, who could have guessed where telecomms would be today.
Even 20 years ago, when the first mobile phones came out, who would have
guessed that they'd be so cheap and affordable that 90% of the
population would have one?
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005

Stephen Osborn wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:

"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in message
...
In article , Stephen Osborn
writes
'phONEday' was in 1995 and all STD codes that did not start 01 had a 1
inserted.

Except for the five that got completely changed.

I meant that all STD codes that did not start 01 were changed so that they
did start 01.

Again, not true. All the NI codes were changed to start 02, as were
several other places.
--
"Mrs Redboots"
http://www.amsmyth.demon.co.uk/
Website updated 2 January 2005

I wrote:
But Aldershot and District did have A reg buses, and I don't think they
were registered in London.

Disclaimer: I didn't look any of the above up.

I just looked this up, and it seems my memory was fooled by the AAA
nnn C numbers. Sorry.

Colin McKenzie

Mrs Redboots wrote:
Stephen Osborn wrote to uk.transport.london on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:

"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in
message ...
In article , Stephen Osborn
writes
'phONEday' was in 1995 and all STD codes that did not start 01
had a 1 inserted.

Except for the five that got completely changed.

I meant that all STD codes that did not start 01 were changed so
that they did start 01.

Again, not true. All the NI codes were changed to start 02, as were
several other places.

But that was the Big Number change in 2000, not the phONEday change in
1995. The latter resulted in Belfast, for example, changing from 0232
to 01232.

--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)