Scotsman Archive

Change over in telephones, 26 March, 1950

IN THREE minutes, Post Office telephone engineers carried through the transfer on Saturday of about 5,200 telephone subscribers in three areas of Edinburgh from their former five-digit numbers to new numbers of three letters and four digits.

The transfer, for which the need first became apparent as early as the 1930s and which involved highly technical planning and work over a long period, was marked by a ceremony at 118 George Street when the new exchanges were opened by the Lady Provost, Miss Rodney Murray, before a company representative of Edinburgh's business and industrial interests. In one corner of the room where the ceremony was performed by the Lady Provost pulling out the first insulating wedges in the board to cut off old numbers, an indicator board signalled the progress of the operation to the spectators.The bustle from the exchange in an adjoining room marked the end of the brief period for which the telephone service had been interrupted.

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