Bell System 1966
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Number PULEAZE! Part Five:
- Thread starter Ultramatic
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This one is in French, but was an ad that stuck in my head from a time I lived there.
French area codes changed completely on 18 Oct 1996.
They moved from a somewhat unusual system to something far more like the rest of Europe, with regional geographic area codes that start with 0
The ad is just *extremely* French!
France Télécom (Ma Bell’s somewhat artsy French counterpart) is now called Orange and is one of those the largest telcos in Europe.
French area codes changed completely on 18 Oct 1996.
They moved from a somewhat unusual system to something far more like the rest of Europe, with regional geographic area codes that start with 0
The ad is just *extremely* French!
France Télécom (Ma Bell’s somewhat artsy French counterpart) is now called Orange and is one of those the largest telcos in Europe.
One fascinating fact about the North American Numbering Plan (country code 1) is that there is no inherent way to identify numbers by technology as there was developed in most of the rest of the world. You're entirely unable to tell the difference when dialing 10 digits whether you're dialing a landline or mobile (which resulted in a mobile party pays system in North America). The rest of the world utilizes technology-specific numbering so you can identify technology (which results in a calling-party pays system, and calls to mobiles are typically more $$ to place than a call to a landline. It's actually illegal to differentiate technologies in US/Canada (New York proposed a cellular-only area code which was shot down toute suite!)
European numbering plans tended to encode a lot of geographical routing information into the number itself.
If you take the Irish system as an example, and the same applies in a lot of European countries, it works like this:
For landlines, the country is divided into 7 large “directory areas” which in the old days were literally the 7 telephone books. 01, 02, 04, 05, 06, 07 and 09.
Each of those codes is then further subdivided by adding an extra digit. Usually the principal town / city got 1. So Galway for example is (091), Cork (021) and so on. Smaller towns then other numbers, so you’d have (062), (064) etc and some area codes used a second layer like (0401) wheee they had more than 9 codes. Then local numbering is 5-digit in low population areas, 6-digits in others or 7-digits in some areas. It just depended on demand/population.
On the landline network number analysis is done live as you dial, so you get instant connection too. You’ll also get a reorder / error message if you hit a block of numbers that doesn’t exist, and that will happen before you compete the number. Like say 031 99x xxxx doesn’t exist, your call gets dumped at the 031 99
With mobiles that isn’t done as you send the digits with the send/call button and VoIP usually doesn’t bother either.
The structured number allowed routing without much number translation - so as you just dialled through the old network when long distance was introduced back in 1956 here. Charging also tended to be done by prefix.
The way charging worked in the old network (Strowger, Crossbar and earlier digital) here used impulses.
Calls were charged in “Units” not in money values. Each unit cost say 10 pence.
A local call used to coat 1 unit, untimed and a long distance or international call used 1 unit per x minutes. The more expensive the destination the faster the impulses.
Each time a unit elapsed, the telephone exchange recorded it on a subscriber meter, or on a computer system. The impulses could also be sent out as a 12kHz tone. That was interpreted by pay phones and also by PBXs for billing. You could even get a meter that plugged into the phone and request the meter pulses to be turned on.
They stopped using those sometime in the 1990s, other than for pay phones. Later pay phones had their own charging software built in and just used an initial meter pulse from the network so they knew the call had connected and to unmute the mic and begin charging.
Most payphones also wouldn’t allow you to dial extra digits before the call had connected and the mic remained muted until the first pulse was detected, so a lot of American Blueboxing etc never worked in Europe. I remember making calls on a line with an Ericsson crossbar, and it made none of the interesting noises I’ve heard on recording phone phreaks in the US heard. When the switch was talking to the network, you were connected to a comfort tone that just sounded like “tick tick tick tick..” mimicking a clock sound. When it created the path, you’d get a clunk and ring/busy etc. Any exotic inter office signalling MF tones and pulses during call setup we’re hidden/muted.
If you were using a pay phone you deposited coins or inserted a prepaid smart card (optical cards in some European countries too) and a value was displayed on a little display in units. Older coin phone didn’t display anything, but you just loaded them with multiple coins in advance. When you hung up, unused coins were returned.
When the payphone detected an meter pulse, it knew the call was connected and debited one unit or dropped a coin and as each unit ticked away, the credit was debited or the coins continued to drop. The more expensive the call, the faster the units ticked by.
None of that stuff is used anymore as billing is far more flexible and complex and there are umpteen companies involved.
When mobile phones arrived in around 1984 or so, they wanted to preserve the caller pays model and also didn’t want mobile phones to be tied to a specific geographical area, so the numbering was kept separate and calls to mobiles were more expensive than landlines, but you didn’t pay anything to receive calls.
As time moved on that’s become largely irrelevant. Everyone’s operating on unlimited call bundles these days and the number of landlines is dwindling fast. So we’ve something like 63 landline area codes with about 2 million active users and maybe 5.3 million active mobile lines using just 3 area codes.
The highly structured numbering was just very shored to electromechanical switching systems. It’s totally unnecessary really since the network went digital in the early 80s but changing them was also pointless.
You can now port landlines to mobile numbers or mobile numbers to other technologies so it’s becoming a bit irrelevant.
We also used to have complex shared cost numbers, mostly used by businesses. The caller and the receiver both paid part of the costs.
1850 charged local rate connection fee and 1890 charged as a timed local call and so on. They got rid of all of those recently.
We now just have 1800 toll free or 0818 which is just a non geographical area code, which is popular with business users as you don’t have be fixed too a particular official physical area. They just charge out of your bundled minutes as if they’re regular landline number.
The one handy thing about the system is you can still tell where a number is by just looking at the area code as they’re regional. [this post was last edited: 3/20/2022-01:00]
If you take the Irish system as an example, and the same applies in a lot of European countries, it works like this:
For landlines, the country is divided into 7 large “directory areas” which in the old days were literally the 7 telephone books. 01, 02, 04, 05, 06, 07 and 09.
Each of those codes is then further subdivided by adding an extra digit. Usually the principal town / city got 1. So Galway for example is (091), Cork (021) and so on. Smaller towns then other numbers, so you’d have (062), (064) etc and some area codes used a second layer like (0401) wheee they had more than 9 codes. Then local numbering is 5-digit in low population areas, 6-digits in others or 7-digits in some areas. It just depended on demand/population.
On the landline network number analysis is done live as you dial, so you get instant connection too. You’ll also get a reorder / error message if you hit a block of numbers that doesn’t exist, and that will happen before you compete the number. Like say 031 99x xxxx doesn’t exist, your call gets dumped at the 031 99
With mobiles that isn’t done as you send the digits with the send/call button and VoIP usually doesn’t bother either.
The structured number allowed routing without much number translation - so as you just dialled through the old network when long distance was introduced back in 1956 here. Charging also tended to be done by prefix.
The way charging worked in the old network (Strowger, Crossbar and earlier digital) here used impulses.
Calls were charged in “Units” not in money values. Each unit cost say 10 pence.
A local call used to coat 1 unit, untimed and a long distance or international call used 1 unit per x minutes. The more expensive the destination the faster the impulses.
Each time a unit elapsed, the telephone exchange recorded it on a subscriber meter, or on a computer system. The impulses could also be sent out as a 12kHz tone. That was interpreted by pay phones and also by PBXs for billing. You could even get a meter that plugged into the phone and request the meter pulses to be turned on.
They stopped using those sometime in the 1990s, other than for pay phones. Later pay phones had their own charging software built in and just used an initial meter pulse from the network so they knew the call had connected and to unmute the mic and begin charging.
Most payphones also wouldn’t allow you to dial extra digits before the call had connected and the mic remained muted until the first pulse was detected, so a lot of American Blueboxing etc never worked in Europe. I remember making calls on a line with an Ericsson crossbar, and it made none of the interesting noises I’ve heard on recording phone phreaks in the US heard. When the switch was talking to the network, you were connected to a comfort tone that just sounded like “tick tick tick tick..” mimicking a clock sound. When it created the path, you’d get a clunk and ring/busy etc. Any exotic inter office signalling MF tones and pulses during call setup we’re hidden/muted.
If you were using a pay phone you deposited coins or inserted a prepaid smart card (optical cards in some European countries too) and a value was displayed on a little display in units. Older coin phone didn’t display anything, but you just loaded them with multiple coins in advance. When you hung up, unused coins were returned.
When the payphone detected an meter pulse, it knew the call was connected and debited one unit or dropped a coin and as each unit ticked away, the credit was debited or the coins continued to drop. The more expensive the call, the faster the units ticked by.
None of that stuff is used anymore as billing is far more flexible and complex and there are umpteen companies involved.
When mobile phones arrived in around 1984 or so, they wanted to preserve the caller pays model and also didn’t want mobile phones to be tied to a specific geographical area, so the numbering was kept separate and calls to mobiles were more expensive than landlines, but you didn’t pay anything to receive calls.
As time moved on that’s become largely irrelevant. Everyone’s operating on unlimited call bundles these days and the number of landlines is dwindling fast. So we’ve something like 63 landline area codes with about 2 million active users and maybe 5.3 million active mobile lines using just 3 area codes.
The highly structured numbering was just very shored to electromechanical switching systems. It’s totally unnecessary really since the network went digital in the early 80s but changing them was also pointless.
You can now port landlines to mobile numbers or mobile numbers to other technologies so it’s becoming a bit irrelevant.
We also used to have complex shared cost numbers, mostly used by businesses. The caller and the receiver both paid part of the costs.
1850 charged local rate connection fee and 1890 charged as a timed local call and so on. They got rid of all of those recently.
We now just have 1800 toll free or 0818 which is just a non geographical area code, which is popular with business users as you don’t have be fixed too a particular official physical area. They just charge out of your bundled minutes as if they’re regular landline number.
The one handy thing about the system is you can still tell where a number is by just looking at the area code as they’re regional. [this post was last edited: 3/20/2022-01:00]
Telephone books / directories
It’s amazing when you think back on it how much was involved in what seems like something very simple nowadays, with ubiquitous internet, information systems and powerful search engines.
This video is from 1979 from the U.K. GPO which operated the phone system there until the early 1980s when BT was spun out and privatised.
It’s amazing when you think back on it how much was involved in what seems like something very simple nowadays, with ubiquitous internet, information systems and powerful search engines.
This video is from 1979 from the U.K. GPO which operated the phone system there until the early 1980s when BT was spun out and privatised.
That was a fun blast from the past---with the privatized North American telephone system, these were done at a more local level (rather than by the GPO). Reuben Donnelly was one big directory printer (they also printed the Sears Catalogue as well as magazines).
My grandparents lived in suburban Chicago, but not in an Illinois Bell territory, so they had a wimpy telephone book only covering Des Plaines and Park Ridge, the areas covered by that company, but there was always a big Chicago phone book hanging around for dining room booster service
They tended to use exchange boundaries in our area to provide the smaller phone books, which wasn't always convenient when one lived near a boundary---
My grandparents lived in suburban Chicago, but not in an Illinois Bell territory, so they had a wimpy telephone book only covering Des Plaines and Park Ridge, the areas covered by that company, but there was always a big Chicago phone book hanging around for dining room booster service
They tended to use exchange boundaries in our area to provide the smaller phone books, which wasn't always convenient when one lived near a boundary---
In the U.K. the GPO lost its monopoly in 1981 and was privatised as BT in 1984.
Here in Ireland phonebooks were a whole lot simpler, as the population is only about 4 million.
We had an absolutely ludicrous number of area codes (63 codes at one stage!) for the scale of the population, but they’re regionalised so the first two digits of the area code are for a broad region.
We had 6 phonebooks, 4 of which had the white pages and Golden Pages (Yellow pages) combined into the same physical book - you just flipped it over and opened it at the back for the Golden Pages.
Only the (01) Dublin and Cork (02) areas had separate books. The rest didn’t have enough population.
Our codes just divide the country into 7 broad areas and then sub-divided those further into 3 digit dialling codes - so you could always tell where you were calling / where incoming caller ID is from just by looking at the first couple of digits.
For example the 02 area - divides into Cork City (021) xxx xxxx and then smaller towns would be (022) xxxxx (023) xxxxx (024) xxxxx … right the way to. (029) xxxxx
All of the codes except Dublin worked like that and the number of digits in the local number varies from 5 to 7 depending on the demand. Most rural areas only have 5 digit local numbers, but a lot have been merged and are 7 digit. Whatever way the old Ericsson crossbars and ITT crossbars worked, they didn’t seem to be bothered by mixed length numbers. When digital arrived in 1980 that became even less of an issue.
The company that owned Golden Pages managed the whole directory publication setup commercially and the old P&T just gave them a franchise. They used to always feature photographs (often from a completion) or kids drawings and so on on the front cover.
They stopped publishing physical phonebooks in 2020. The were only available by special request by about 2007. By 2019 they were only sending out 2400 copies so they gave up entirely as there was no demand.
France originally launched their Minitel videotext services to avoid having to publish physical phonebooks. It morphed into a full interactive text system in the early 80s
Weird one I’ve heard here was the recorded wrong number messages now just say “The number you have dialled has not been recognised - please search online for a new number and try your call again.” Rather than “… please check the telephone directory, or call directory enquires and try your call again.”
End of an era.
Here in Ireland phonebooks were a whole lot simpler, as the population is only about 4 million.
We had an absolutely ludicrous number of area codes (63 codes at one stage!) for the scale of the population, but they’re regionalised so the first two digits of the area code are for a broad region.
We had 6 phonebooks, 4 of which had the white pages and Golden Pages (Yellow pages) combined into the same physical book - you just flipped it over and opened it at the back for the Golden Pages.
Only the (01) Dublin and Cork (02) areas had separate books. The rest didn’t have enough population.
Our codes just divide the country into 7 broad areas and then sub-divided those further into 3 digit dialling codes - so you could always tell where you were calling / where incoming caller ID is from just by looking at the first couple of digits.
For example the 02 area - divides into Cork City (021) xxx xxxx and then smaller towns would be (022) xxxxx (023) xxxxx (024) xxxxx … right the way to. (029) xxxxx
All of the codes except Dublin worked like that and the number of digits in the local number varies from 5 to 7 depending on the demand. Most rural areas only have 5 digit local numbers, but a lot have been merged and are 7 digit. Whatever way the old Ericsson crossbars and ITT crossbars worked, they didn’t seem to be bothered by mixed length numbers. When digital arrived in 1980 that became even less of an issue.
The company that owned Golden Pages managed the whole directory publication setup commercially and the old P&T just gave them a franchise. They used to always feature photographs (often from a completion) or kids drawings and so on on the front cover.
They stopped publishing physical phonebooks in 2020. The were only available by special request by about 2007. By 2019 they were only sending out 2400 copies so they gave up entirely as there was no demand.
France originally launched their Minitel videotext services to avoid having to publish physical phonebooks. It morphed into a full interactive text system in the early 80s
Weird one I’ve heard here was the recorded wrong number messages now just say “The number you have dialled has not been recognised - please search online for a new number and try your call again.” Rather than “… please check the telephone directory, or call directory enquires and try your call again.”
End of an era.
A 1987 field training video from BT explaining how to look for chargeable items on repairs … just shows how those utility companies think …
I can’t speak for the situation in Britain, but here they ditched equipment rental in the early 1990s. Before that they used to install all your internal extension wiring and rented a range of phones and other equipment. You could also buy your own, but in theory you weren’t supposed to install your own extension wiring, but in reality they could do nothing about it if you did and the wiring is just two pair. I know my parents had DIY extensions in the 80s. I think in the U.K. it was common that DIY extension wiring was plugged into an official BT socket to avoid “tampering with plant and equipment”.
With landline faults, they only take responsibility up to a demarcation socket, which has a test socket that disconnects your extensions and with fibre services they have never supported anything beyond their own NTU. The fibre service is provided up to a termination socket and your ISP provides the router, which is just self install.
post was last edited: 4/9/2022-20:10]
I can’t speak for the situation in Britain, but here they ditched equipment rental in the early 1990s. Before that they used to install all your internal extension wiring and rented a range of phones and other equipment. You could also buy your own, but in theory you weren’t supposed to install your own extension wiring, but in reality they could do nothing about it if you did and the wiring is just two pair. I know my parents had DIY extensions in the 80s. I think in the U.K. it was common that DIY extension wiring was plugged into an official BT socket to avoid “tampering with plant and equipment”.
With landline faults, they only take responsibility up to a demarcation socket, which has a test socket that disconnects your extensions and with fibre services they have never supported anything beyond their own NTU. The fibre service is provided up to a termination socket and your ISP provides the router, which is just self install.
post was last edited: 4/9/2022-20:10]
Bell 1981
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<script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Odd 80s vibe …
This was Prestel, an early 80s videotext service in the U.K. which was somewhat similar in concept to the French Minitel platform but not quite. It never really took off, but it was an interesting bit of pre Internet technology. It was a lot more limited than Minitel, which actually let providers host their own services on their own servers, ands was a bit more like online teletext.
However, the GPO advertising campaigns seemed to really get the tone a bit weird - somewhere between HAL-9000 and The Ring. Rather than a friendly, cute household appliance like Minitel was presented, they managed to give this a really creepy vibe.
Minitel in France was much more successful and survived for a long time. Here’s a very good review of an old Minitel terminal connecting to a demo service (in English):
Attached below: image of late 1980s Irish Minitel. Same system - just with a QWERTY keyboard and an RJ11 phone jack and Irish power plug.
The service here never really survived beyond the earliest days of the Web and was very quickly surpassed by the internet. However, it had our earliest home banking, online shopping, airline, cinema, and train booking etc etc.
A service called Gulliver, used to centrally book B&Bs and small hotels clung on until the Minitel system was closed down. I don’t think it ever achieved much of a market, but it had some useful niches.
It was purely commercial here (a joint venture between two telcos and two banks) and incumbent phone company at the time, now known as Eir, was a 25% shareholder but didn’t really have much interest in driving it. Other online services were already available, the internet was very much on the immediate horizon and being an English speaking market, there were very few synergies with French services, but it was an interesting bit of kit and a step along the road towards the Web.
A lot of the business models for e-commerce sites were already happening on the French platform in the 80s, and at a scale because France Telecom gave the terminals away for free as part of your standard landline connection. So there were millions of active users in France at its peak and a whole ecosystem of servers and service providers (including plenty of X rated stuff) grew up around it. It was an interesting sandbox that preempted a lot of Web business models. It worked as an open exchange, allowing service providers to host their own Minitel sites and services across a very standardised platform - so you had a lot of innovative development of services for it, but it was still more like the Ma Bell concept of the phone company in charge.
Later versions supported GIF or JPEG images, better resolution and could even read chip credit cards (introduced in France in the 80s). So you could, at least on some terminals, complete secure transactions at home. Quite sophisticated for it's time and the terminals were very cute for that era. They are reminiscent of early Mac in shape, but a lot smaller, essentially dumb terminals and predate the Mac so I don't think one inspired the other.
Minitel essentially ran as an application on packet switching systems. Transpac in France, or Eirpac here. They had their own software platforms and some of the routing was done using special versions of digital telephone switches running custom software. So it was very much a creature of the 80s telephone network.
There were numerous Videotext services in Europe and North America, most of them flopped. Minitel in France seems to have the only one that ever achieved scale and a genuine existence of service providers.
It’s still cool though to look back on some of these very early attempts at mass market online services.[this post was last edited: 4/10/2022-07:43]
This was Prestel, an early 80s videotext service in the U.K. which was somewhat similar in concept to the French Minitel platform but not quite. It never really took off, but it was an interesting bit of pre Internet technology. It was a lot more limited than Minitel, which actually let providers host their own services on their own servers, ands was a bit more like online teletext.
However, the GPO advertising campaigns seemed to really get the tone a bit weird - somewhere between HAL-9000 and The Ring. Rather than a friendly, cute household appliance like Minitel was presented, they managed to give this a really creepy vibe.
Minitel in France was much more successful and survived for a long time. Here’s a very good review of an old Minitel terminal connecting to a demo service (in English):
Attached below: image of late 1980s Irish Minitel. Same system - just with a QWERTY keyboard and an RJ11 phone jack and Irish power plug.
The service here never really survived beyond the earliest days of the Web and was very quickly surpassed by the internet. However, it had our earliest home banking, online shopping, airline, cinema, and train booking etc etc.
A service called Gulliver, used to centrally book B&Bs and small hotels clung on until the Minitel system was closed down. I don’t think it ever achieved much of a market, but it had some useful niches.
It was purely commercial here (a joint venture between two telcos and two banks) and incumbent phone company at the time, now known as Eir, was a 25% shareholder but didn’t really have much interest in driving it. Other online services were already available, the internet was very much on the immediate horizon and being an English speaking market, there were very few synergies with French services, but it was an interesting bit of kit and a step along the road towards the Web.
A lot of the business models for e-commerce sites were already happening on the French platform in the 80s, and at a scale because France Telecom gave the terminals away for free as part of your standard landline connection. So there were millions of active users in France at its peak and a whole ecosystem of servers and service providers (including plenty of X rated stuff) grew up around it. It was an interesting sandbox that preempted a lot of Web business models. It worked as an open exchange, allowing service providers to host their own Minitel sites and services across a very standardised platform - so you had a lot of innovative development of services for it, but it was still more like the Ma Bell concept of the phone company in charge.
Later versions supported GIF or JPEG images, better resolution and could even read chip credit cards (introduced in France in the 80s). So you could, at least on some terminals, complete secure transactions at home. Quite sophisticated for it's time and the terminals were very cute for that era. They are reminiscent of early Mac in shape, but a lot smaller, essentially dumb terminals and predate the Mac so I don't think one inspired the other.
Minitel essentially ran as an application on packet switching systems. Transpac in France, or Eirpac here. They had their own software platforms and some of the routing was done using special versions of digital telephone switches running custom software. So it was very much a creature of the 80s telephone network.
There were numerous Videotext services in Europe and North America, most of them flopped. Minitel in France seems to have the only one that ever achieved scale and a genuine existence of service providers.
It’s still cool though to look back on some of these very early attempts at mass market online services.[this post was last edited: 4/10/2022-07:43]
Bell Telephone System 1961
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Bell System 1982
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<script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>My cousin Pam got a Princess phone in Turquoise for her bedroom when she was about 12 years old (1966). There was a box mounted on the wall that had 6 buttons, one for hold, two for outside lines, and one for intercom. Her 15 year old brother Joe had a phone in his room too, but the line buttons were on the phone itself, as were all others except the kitchen wall phone, which had the same line selector box as Pam's room.
Bob Geldof Irish anti phone box vandalism ad
This is a very 80s cringe inducing public service ad from Telecom Éireann (Ma Bell’s Irish cousin) that aired around 1985. It features Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats and Live Aid etc)
“Hey, stupid: Leave that phone alone!”
This is a very 80s cringe inducing public service ad from Telecom Éireann (Ma Bell’s Irish cousin) that aired around 1985. It features Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats and Live Aid etc)
“Hey, stupid: Leave that phone alone!”
Bell Phone Center 1983
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General Telephone & Electronics 1958
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Bell Telephone System 1941
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