cooleycr said:NB: best to dial 112 - so much quicker than 999 as that takes an age for the dial to return :-\
ttxela said:cooleycr said:NB: best to dial 112 - so much quicker than 999 as that takes an age for the dial to return :-\
I remember being taught that 999 was chosen so you could locate the right hole easily using the metal bar across the dial in a darkened or smoke filled room.
Anyhow you lot have terrified Mrs T and she's now unplugged her signal booster and hidden it behind the fishtank!
The 9-9-9 format was chosen based on the 'button A' and 'button B' design of pre-payment coin-operated public payphones in wide use (first introduced in 1925) which could be easily modified to allow free use of the 9 digit on the rotary dial in addition to the 0 digit (then used to call the operator), without allowing free use of numbers involving other digits; other combinations of free call 9 and 0 were later used for more purposes, including multiples of 9 (to access exchanges before STD came into use) as a fail-safe for attempted emergency calls, e.g. 9 or 99, reaching at least an operator.
Wils said:I have this solution which is for all operators and networks
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