Dear LPG, 

I was browsing the internet one day recently and I stumbled upon some information about National Telephone Day.  It occurs today (if LPG have posted this message on the day I requested) and, according to what I read today was chosen because it is the 146th anniversary of the year that Alexander Graham Bell revealed his first prototype to the world. 

But so much has happened since then.  I think that our generation is old enough to remember when houses did not have phones in, and we felt privileged to have one in our street.  Do you ever remember having to wait in a queue to use one in the days when telephone numbers all started with three letters that denoted the area of the UK you were dialling?

I remember that our family got our own telephone number, and it was ‘FOR 0839’ (we lived in Forest Hill).  I also remember spending a decade as a telephone operator.  When I started the job in 1984 we all had to write down the details of every call we made, but it was all automated by the time I left.   When I started, we had to switch the doctor’s emergency numbers over at the exchange every night and put them back every morning, we made every single alarm call ourselves. We all signed the official secrets act because of the information we learned from the 999 calls, and when someone phoned to find out if a number was busy we used to be able to check by listening into the conversation.

I worked the evening, weekend and night shifts while my husband looked after our children in those days and there was many a time when he was on the phone during my break so, when I went back on shift, I would ‘drop into the conversation, excuse myself and, provided I knew the person he was talking to tell him that I would be a bit late home before dropping out again. 

We all did it and you would be right to imagine that two or three marriages broke up because a working spouse was able to overhear bits of information that gave the game away…

Then came the computer and in the first days of the internet you could not use the phone if your modem was in use.  Do you remember the sound you would hear if you picked up the phone while the modem was connecting your computer to the internet?

Telephone books and telephone kiosks have become a thing of the past since the turn of the century with the kiosks that are left being converted for some of the most unusual uses.  I must mention the mini library on Lewisham Way at this point.  

Then came the mobile phone and the denationalisation of British Telecom which heralded all those companies that we now have, and I am sure that we have all heard that the landline as we now know it will soon be a thing of the past.

The internet suggests that it won’t be long before the analogue telephone system undergoes a change similar to what happened to our televisions in 2007.  The landline system will become wireless and controlled by the internet.  This is scheduled to happen in 2025.

We will most probably all have to buy new land-line telephones, but I suspect not a lot else will change for the consumer.  

GF, Catford 

GF shares a few bits of information she found on the subject…

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… and an audio memory of dial- up internet for those who remember…

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