Dear LPG,

I would just like to inform LPG readers that I have an aunt that will be 83 years old today (I say ‘will be’ because I am writing this in advance of her birthday).  I thought it would be a good idea to find something significant that happened on her birthday, to theme a party around, and having found the following I thought I might share it a little further afield.

Did you know that today also marks the 83^rd anniversary of the introduction of the first ever emergency service?  The significance of telephone number 999, even if there has never been occasion to dial it, is etched on the minds of nearly every English child as part of their social education.   We have been taught never to use it unless we find ourselves in critical circumstances but you would have had to have grown up in a bubble not to know its significance.   I found some interesting reasons as to why the number 999 was chosen for the service all that time ago and, did you know, that since we became part of the EU there has been an alternative number; dialling 112 works in the UK too.  Since 1937 there have been so many three digit numbers introduced for so many different services but 999 was first.

I am sure that many of us older members of the UK dialling public might still expect 123 to get us the speaking clock and 100 to connect us to the operator, although now that we have so many different telephone companies, the universal 3 digit services vary depending on which telephone service provider we use and they have all changed quite a bit; and that is just in England.

I found a list of emergency telephone numbers that are used in the different countries throughout our world and for the travellers amongst us it may be useful to keep a note just in case you’re planning a holiday in the near future. 

It is interesting that I have used the word dialling quite a few times while writing this but there are very few telephones with dials left now; another thing that has changed right under our noses while we were not really looking.  Perhaps I should have been using the word keying but it does not sound the same.

I just want you to know that I have not forgotten my Aunt’s birthday in all this, but thinking about her has triggered some interesting information which I would like to offer to anyone who has a birthday or is off to foreign climes in the near future.

I would also like to offer a wish for a happy birthday to my aunt and any readers who share it today.

JB, Dartford

JB left some links….

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