calls on telephonic apparatusIntroduction
After more years than I care to remember serving under the GPO, Post Office Telephones, British Telecom and BT, I decided to put some background info together to cover some of the areas I became involved with.
Much of this is based in the glory days of Strowger, plus additional background material of traffic planning functions, demand forecasting and International Telephony.
This is in the olden days, before you could fit an entire exchange into an empty broom cupboard.
Why?
My inspiration for these pages primarily stems from the discovery of a pile of books outside the Training Office in the mid eighties, with a sign saying 'Take what you want - the rest will be skipped on Friday' (or words to that effect).
As a compulsive hoarder, I picked up a handful relating to my then current studies in marketing and economics, but then spotted the two volumes of 'Telephony', by the legendary
Herbert & Procter, knowing they would come in useful one day (although they were already 50 years old).
These particular volumes were presented to the Canterbury Telephone Area by the parents of an RAF Sergeant who was killed in action in 1942.
Sergeant Spratt had also written his name and address in Volume I.
From what I can gather, Sergeant Spratt's father, Leonard, was Postmaster at Birchington-on-Sea, although I stand to be corrected.
These telephony pages are dedicated to Sergeant Spratt who made the ultimate sacrifice, so that I, nearly 70 years later, have the freedom to publish these modest pages on the web.
Subscribers' Station Apparatus
The Autodial
Almost 80 years ago, the GPO offered a device to store and automatically dial up to 50 numbers at the press of a lever.
Rather than all being done at the touch of a button, this device relied upon clockwork and 'castellated discs', which had to be modified using '
Tool, Instrument, No. 273'.
I recall fitting something akin (albeit battery powered) for a disabled customer in Canterbury in the mid seventies. The mechanism was similar, but the batteries came in a box the size of a small suitcase.
All rather a Heath-Robinson affair.