Posted by Alan Hakim on September 05, 2006 at 10:58:15 from 213.166.17.11 user awhakim.
In Reply to: Re: Beckfoot Telephone - DIAL? posted by Ian E-N on September 04, 2006 at 19:38:13:
But the text gives it away as a London telephone label. Everybody knew about Trunk calls. "Dial TRU" put you through to the Trunk operator if you had a dial telephone; otherwise you just asked the local operator - often in the village post office - to put you through to Trunks. But London had an intermediate "TOLL" band between Local and Trunk which had its own (semi-)long distance exchange. As a Londoner, you were meant to know the difference.
Dialling spread very slowly, though the tiny country exchanges were converted much sooner than medium-sized towns - it was easy to convert a few dozen lines. My parents in the London suburbs remained on a manual exchange until 1965. This was several years after major cities had been able to dial their trunk calls direct, as we all do today.