BT Archives
BT Archives is an archive preserving the documentary heritage of BT and its public sector predecessors. It is designated an official place of deposit for Public Records, for those records created prior to BT's privatisation in 1984; the records include minutes, subject files, photographs and advertising material that tell the story of telecommunications in the UK and from the UK to overseas, from the formation of the private telegraph and telephone companies in the nineteenth century to the present day. The earliest records held by BT Archives are those of the Electric Telegraph Company from 1846. Other private telegraph companies whose records are held are the British Electric Telegraph Company, International Telegraph Company, Submarine Telegraph Company and International Telegraph Company and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company, London District Telegraph Company, United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company, Universal Private Telegraph Company, Eastern Telegraph Company, British Telegraph Company, Irish Submarine Telegraph Company and Irish Magnetic Telegraph Company and the Anglo-American Telegraph Company.
BT Archives holds documents relating to the UK telegraph service of the British Post Office. BT Archives holds records of the private telephone companies and of the Post Office telephone services; the private telephone companies represented are the Telephone Company Limited, Edison Telephone Company of London Limited, United Telephone Company and Cheshire Telephonic Exchange Company Limited, Northern District Telephone Company, National Telephone Company, Western Counties and South Wales Telephone Company, Corporation of Glasgow Telephone Department and London and Globe Telephone Maintenance Company. Post Office Telecommunications activities continue concurrently and subsequently to the private telegraph and telephone companies; these are documented in the records of the Post Office telegraph and telephone service 1864-1969 and the Post Office Corporation 1969-1981. From 1 October 1981, British Telecommunications, trading as British Telecom, severed its links with the Post Office and became a separate public corporation.
Records of British Telecommunications are held from 1981 until privatisation in 1984. Records after privatisation, of British Telecommunications plc 1984-2001, of BT Group plc from 2001, continue to be preserved and made available for researchers in line with BT's heritage policy; the British Phone Book collection is a major resource for genealogy and family history, containing a near-complete set of United Kingdom telephone directories from the first one issued in 1880. For preservation reasons the phone books are accessed on microfilm, the phone books 1880-1984 are digitised and have been made available online. BT Archives cares for 1,000 film titles. Selected images can be found on BT Archives online image gallery. BT Archives is based in Holborn Telephone Exchange in the Holborn area of central London and is open, by appointment, to public researchers on Mondays and Tuesday from 10:00am - 4:00pm. There is no access charge. Descriptions of the historic collections are available on the BT Archives online catalogue.
Full access and preservation policies can be found on the BT Archives website It is a partner in the Connected Earth network, the heritage initiative founded by BT in 2001 to safeguard telecommunications artefacts. BT Archives and Connected Earth together form BT Heritage, part of BT's corporate responsibility programme. BT Museum BT Archives official site BT Archives online catalogue BT Archives online image gallery BT's heritage policy Connected Earth website Searchable records from BT Archives phone books Distant Writing - The History of the Telegraph Companies in Britain between 1838 and 1868
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a coastal city in the U. S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, is part of the New York metropolitan area. With a population of 129,779 as determined by the 2010 United States Census, it is the second-largest city in Connecticut after Bridgeport. New Haven is the principal municipality of Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 862,477 in 2010. New Haven was the first planned city in America. A year after its founding by English Puritans in 1638, eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating what is known as the "Nine Square Plan"; the central common block is the New Haven Green, a 16-acre square at the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark, the "Nine Square Plan" is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark. New Haven is the home of Yale University; as New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, Yale serves as an integral part of the city's economy.
Health care, professional services, financial services, retail trade contribute to the city's economic activity. The city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, when sole governance was transferred to the more centrally located city of Hartford. New Haven has since billed itself as the "Cultural Capital of Connecticut" for its supply of established theaters and music venues. New Haven had the first public tree planting program in America, producing a canopy of mature trees that gave the city the nickname "The Elm City". Before Europeans arrived, the New Haven area was the home of the Quinnipiac tribe of Native Americans, who lived in villages around the harbor and subsisted off local fisheries and the farming of maize; the area was visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a small trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic and the Dutch did not settle permanently in the area. In 1637 a small party of Puritans wintered over.
In April 1638, the main party of five hundred Puritans who had left the Massachusetts Bay Colony under the leadership of the Reverend John Davenport and London merchant Theophilus Eaton sailed into the harbor. It was their hope to set up a theological community with the government more linked to the church than that in Massachusetts, to exploit the area's excellent potential as a port; the Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for protection. By 1640, "Qunnipiac's" theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place, the town was renamed Newhaven, with'haven' meaning harbor or port; the settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, distinct from the Connecticut Colony established to the north centering on Hartford. Reflecting its theocratic roots, the New Haven Colony forbid the establishment of other churches, whereas the Connecticut Colony permitted them. Economic disaster struck Newhaven in 1646, when the town sent its first loaded ship of local goods back to England.
It never reached its destination, its disappearance stymied New Haven's development versus the rising trade powers of Boston and New Amsterdam. In 1660, Colony founder John Davenport's wishes were fulfilled, Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins. In 1661, the Regicides who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II. Two of them, Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe, fled to New Haven for refuge. Davenport arranged. A third judge, John Dixwell, joined the others. In 1664 New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England, according to folklore as punishment for harboring the three judges; some members of the New Haven Colony seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere went on to establish Newark, New Jersey. It was made co-capital of Connecticut in 1701, a status it retained until 1873. In 1716, the Collegiate School relocated from Old Saybrook to New Haven, establishing New Haven as a center of learning.
In 1718, in response to a large donation from British East India Company merchant Elihu Yale, former Governor of Madras, the name of the Collegiate School was changed to Yale College. For over a century, New Haven citizens had fought in the colonial militia alongside regular British forces, as in the French and Indian War; as the American Revolution approached, General David Wooster and other influential residents hoped that the conflict with the government in Britain could be resolved short of rebellion. On 23 April 1775, still celebrated in New Haven as Powder House Day, the Second Company, Governor's Foot Guard, of New Haven entered the struggle against the governing British parliament. Under Captain Benedict Arnold, they broke into the powder house to arm themselves and began a three-day march to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Other New Haven militia members were on hand to escort George Washington from his overnight stay in New Haven on his way to Cambridge. Contemporary reports, from both sides, remark on the New Haven volunteers' professional military bearing, including uniforms.
On July 5, 1779, 2,600 loyalists and British regulars under General Wil
San Francisco Chronicle
The San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving the San Francisco Bay Area of the U. S. state of California. It was founded in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The paper is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which bought it from the de Young family in 2000, it is the only major daily paper covering the county of San Francisco. The paper benefited from the growth of San Francisco and was the largest circulation newspaper on the West Coast of the United States by 1880. Like many other newspapers, it has experienced a rapid fall in circulation in the early 21st century, was ranked 24th by circulation nationally for the six months to March 2010; the newspaper publishes two web sites: and sfchronicle.com, which reflects the articles that appear in the print paper, SFGate, which has a mixture of online news and web features. The Chronicle was founded by brothers Charles and M. H. de Young in 1865 as The Daily Dramatic Chronicle, inside of 10 years, it had the largest circulation of any newspaper west of the Mississippi River.
The paper's first office was in a building at the corner of Kearney Streets. The brothers commissioned a building from Burnham and Root at 690 Market Street at the corner of Third and Kearney Streets to be their new headquarters, in what became known as Newspaper Row; the new building, San Francisco's first skyscraper, was completed in 1889. It was damaged in the 1906 earthquake, but it was rebuilt under the direction of William Polk, Burnham's associate in San Francisco; that building, known as the "Old Chronicle Building" or the "DeYoung Building", still stands and was restored in 2007. It is the location of the Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences. In 1924, the Chronicle commissioned a new headquarters at 901 Mission Street on the corner of 5th Street in what is now the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, it was designed by Charles Peter Weeks and William Peyton Day in the Gothic Revival architecture style, but most of the Gothic Revival detailing was removed in 1968 when the building was re-clad with stucco.
This building remains the Chronicle's headquarters in 2017, although other concerns are located there as well. Between World War II and 1971, new editor Scott Newhall took a bold and somewhat provocative approach to news presentation. Newhall's Chronicle included investigative reporting by such journalists as Pierre Salinger, who played a prominent role in national politics, Paul Avery, the staffer who pursued the trail of the self-named "Zodiac Killer", who sent a cryptogram in three sections in letters to the Chronicle and two other papers during his murder spree in the late 1960s, it featured such colorful columnists as Pauline Phillips, who wrote under the name "Dear Abby," "Count Marco", Stanton Delaplane, Terence O'Flaherty, Lucius Beebe, Art Hoppe, Charles McCabe, Herb Caen. The newspaper grew in circulation to become the city's largest, overtaking the rival San Francisco Examiner; the demise of other San Francisco dailies through the late 1950s and early 1960s left the Examiner and the Chronicle to battle for circulation and readership superiority.
The competition between the Chronicle and Examiner took a financial toll on both papers until the summer of 1965, when a merger of sorts created a Joint Operating Agreement under which the Chronicle became the city's sole morning daily while the Examiner changed to afternoon publication. The newspapers were owned by the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, which managed sales and distribution for both newspapers and was charged with ensuring that one newspaper's circulation did not grow at the expense of the other. Revenue was split which led to a situation understood to benefit the Examiner, since the Chronicle, which had a circulation four times larger than its rival, subsidized the afternoon newspaper; the two newspapers produced a joint Sunday edition, with the Examiner publishing the news sections and the Sunday magazine and the Chronicle responsible for the tabloid entertainment section and the book review. From 1965 on the two papers shared a single classified-advertising operation; this arrangement stayed in place until the Hearst Corporation took full control of the Chronicle in 2000.
Beginning in the early 1990s, the Chronicle started to face competition beyond the borders of San Francisco. The newspaper had long enjoyed a wide reach as the de facto "newspaper of record" in Northern California, with distribution along the Central Coast, the Inland Empire and as far as Honolulu, Hawaii. There was little competition in the Bay Area suburbs and other areas that the newspaper served, but as Knight Ridder consolidated the San Jose Mercury News in 1975; the Chronicle launched five zoned sections to appear in the Friday edition of the paper. The sections covered San Francisco, four different suburban areas, they each featured enterprise pieces and local news specific to the community. The newspaper added 40 full-time staff positions to work in the suburban bureaus. Despite the push to focus on suburban coverage, the Chronicle was hamstrung by the Sunday edition, being produced by the San Francisco-centric "un-Chronicle" Examiner, had none of the focus on the suburban communities that the Chronicle was striving to cultivate.
The de Young family controlled the paper, via the Chronicle Publishing Company, until July 27, 2000, when it was sold to Hearst Communications, Inc. which owned the Examiner. Following the sale, the
Civil defense
Civil defense or civil protection is an effort to protect the citizens of a state from military attacks and natural disasters. It uses the principles of emergency operations: prevention, preparation, response, or emergency evacuation and recovery. Programs of this sort were discussed at least as early as the 1920s and were implemented in some countries during the 1930s as the threat of war and aerial bombardment grew, it became widespread. Since the end of the Cold War, the focus of civil defence has shifted from military attack to emergencies and disasters in general; the new concept is described by a number of terms, each of which has its own specific shade of meaning, such as crisis management, emergency management, emergency preparedness, contingency planning, civil contingency, civil aid and civil protection. In some countries, civil defense is seen as a key part of "total defense". For example, in Sweden, the Swedish word totalförsvar refers to the commitment of a wide range of resources of the nation to its defense—including to civil protection.
Some countries may have or have had military-organized civil defense units as part of their armed forces or as a paramilitary service. The advent of civil defense was stimulated by the experience of the bombing of civilian areas during the First World War; the bombing of the United Kingdom began on 19 January 1915 when German zeppelins dropped bombs on the Great Yarmouth area, killing six people. German bombing operations of the First World War were effective after the Gotha bombers surpassed the zeppelins; the most devastating raids inflicted. After the war, attention was turned toward civil defense in the event of war, the Air Raid Precautions Committee was established in 1924 to investigate ways for ensuring the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids; the Committee produced figures estimating that in London there would be 9,000 casualties in the first two days and a continuing rate of 17,500 casualties a week. These rates were thought conservative, it was believed that there would be "total chaos and panic" and hysterical neurosis as the people of London would try to flee the city.
To control the population harsh measures were proposed: bringing London under military control, physically cordoning off the city with 120,000 troops to force people back to work. A different government department proposed setting up camps for refugees for a few days before sending them back to London. A special government department, the Civil Defence Service, was established by the Home Office in 1935, its remit included the pre-existing ARP as well as wardens, fire watchers, first aid post, stretcher party and industry. Over 1.9 million people served within the CD. The organization of civil defense was the responsibility of the local authority. Volunteers were ascribed to different units depending on training; each local civil defense service was divided into several sections. Wardens were responsible for local reconnaissance and reporting, leadership, organization and control of the general public. Wardens would advise survivors of the locations of rest and food centers, other welfare facilities.
Rescue Parties were required to assess and access bombed-out buildings and retrieve injured or dead people. In addition they would turn off gas and water supplies, repair or pull down unsteady buildings. Medical services, including First Aid Parties, provided on the spot medical assistance; the expected stream of information that would be generated during an attack was handled by'Report and Control' teams. A local headquarters would have an ARP controller who would direct rescue, first aid and decontamination teams to the scenes of reported bombing. If local services were deemed insufficient to deal with the incident the controller could request assistance from surrounding boroughs. Fire Guards were responsible for a designated area/building and required to monitor the fall of incendiary bombs and pass on news of any fires that had broken out to the NFS, they could deal with an individual magnesium electron incendiary bomb by dousing it with buckets of sand or water or by smothering. Additionally,'Gas Decontamination Teams' kitted out with gas-tight and waterproof protective clothing were to deal with any gas attacks.
They were trained to decontaminate buildings, roads and other material, contaminated by liquid or jelly gases. Little progress was made over the issue of air-raid shelters, because of the irreconcilable conflict between the need to send the public underground for shelter and the need to keep them above ground for protection against gas attacks. In February 1936 the Home Secretary appointed a technical Committee on Structural Precautions against Air Attack. During the Munich crisis, local authorities dug trenches to provide shelter. After the crisis, the British Government decided to make these a permanent feature, with a standard design of precast concrete trench lining, they decided to issue the Anderson shelter free to poorer households and to provide steel props to create shelters in suitable basements. During the Second World War, the ARP was responsible for the issuing of gas masks, pre-fabricated air-raid shelters, the upkeep of local public shelters, the mainte
Minitel
The Minitel was a Videotex online service accessible through telephone lines, is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. The service was rolled out experimentally in 1978 in Brittany and throughout France in 1982 by the PTT. From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, chat in a similar way to what is now made possible by the Internet. In February 2009, France Télécom indicated the Minitel network still had 10 million monthly connections. France Télécom retired the service on 30 June 2012. TELETEL, the name Minitel is abbreviated from the French title of Médium interactif par numérisation d'information téléphonique. In 1978 France Télécom, the country's PTT, began designing the Minitel network. By distributing terminals that could access a nationwide electronic directory of telephone and address information, it hoped to increase use of the country's 23 million phone lines, reduce the costs of printing printed phone books and employing directory assistance personnel.
Millions of terminals were given for free to telephone subscribers. The telephone company emphasized ease of use. By offering a popular service on simple, free equipment, Minitel achieved high market penetration and avoided the chicken and the egg problem that prevented widespread adoption of such a system in the United States. In exchange for the terminal, the possessors of Minitel would only be given the yellow pages; the white pages were accessible for free on Minitel, they could be searched by a reasonably intelligent search engine. A trial with 1,500 residential telephone customers began in Ille-et-Vilaine in May 1981; the service became available in metropolitan Paris in December 1983. in By early 1986 1.4 million terminals were connected to Minitel, with plans to distribute another million by the end of the year. To reduce opposition from newspapers worried about competition from an electronic network, they were allowed to establish the first consumer services on Minitel. Libération offered 24-hour online news, such as results from events at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that occurred overnight in France.
Providers advertised their own services in their own publications, which helped market the overall Minitel network. By 1988 three million terminals were installed, with 100,000 new units installed monthly; the telephone directory received 23 million calls monthly, with 40,000 updates daily. About 6,000 other services were available, with 250 added monthly. France Télécom estimated that 9 million terminals—including web-enabled personal computers —had access to the network at the end of 1999, that it was used by 25 million people. Developed by 10,000 companies, in 1996 26,000 different services were available; the telephone company only provided the white pages, otherwise building infrastructure for others to provide services. Minitel allowed access to various categories: phone directory mail-order retail companies airline or train ticket purchases information services databases message boards online dating services computer gamesThe development of Minitel spawned the creation of many start-up companies in a manner similar to the dot-com bubble of World Wide Web-related companies.
Many of those small companies floundered because of an overcrowded market or bad business practices. By 1985 games and electronic messaging were 42% of Minitel traffic, messaging was 17% of traffic in 1988. Messageries roses were unexpectedly popular, embarrassing government officials who preferred to discuss growing business usage of messaging. Widespread street advertising marketed services such as "3615 Sextel", "Jane", "kiss", "3615 penthouse", "men", they and other pornographic sites were criticized for their possible access by minors. The government chose not to enact coercive measures, stating that the regulation of the online activities of children was up to parents, not the government; the government did, levy a tax on pornographic online services. Payment methods Credit card for purchases Telephone bill for surfing time: rates depend on the sites visitedUsers first subscribed to individual services, but traffic grew after the telephone company offered a "kiosk" model. Minitel and voice charges appeared with no breakout of fees.
Service providers received two thirds of the $10 an hour that customers paid as of 1988. As the telephone company handled bill collection, users who did not pay bills lost telephone service, the customer acquisition cost for service providers was low; the single bill encouraged impulse shopping, in which users intending to use one service found and used others while browsing. As users' identities and services were anonymous, Minitel use was high at work where companies paid for telephone service. In 1985 France Télécom earned 620 million francs from Minitel. 2,000 private companies earned 289 million francs during the year.
Strength athletics
Strength athletics, more known as strongman competitions, is a sport which tests competitors' strength in a variety of different ways. Some of the disciplines are similar to those in powerlifting and some powerlifters have successfully competed in strongman competitions. However, strongman events test physical endurance to a degree not found in powerlifting or other strength-based sports. Competitions designed to test the strength of participants have a long history going back many centuries before the televisation of strongman competitions in the 1970s; this ancient heritage can still be seen in a number of traditional events, the most famous of, the arguably traditional Highland games, which itself is a source of many events now practiced in modern strongman competitions. Different competitions may be structured differently with some strength athletic competitions, such as the World's Strongest Man, being slanted towards dynamic tests of strength, whilst others pivot around tests of pure static strength such as the Arnold Strongman Classic.
The origin of strength athletics lies within prehistory. Testing each other in feats of physical prowess has been something humans have done throughout their existence; this is encapsulated in the modern Olympic motto of "Swifter, stronger". There are records in many civilizations of feats of strength performed by great heroes, mythological or otherwise. In ancient western culture Greek heroes such as Heracles are blessed with great strength. In the Bible, figures with exceptional physical strength are described such as Goliath. Man's obsession with those who possess extraordinary strength is an persistent one. Displaying one's strength took two particular forms of note: as a pure exhibition and within the confines of sporting competition. Within the British Isles records, many centuries old, relay more formally the existence of organised events. Formalization and annual Highland gatherings began around 1820 when Sir Walter Scott encouraged the revival of Highland Culture. By 1848, such was the status of such games.
The strongmen of the world of weightlifting and circus acts were exhibiting their prowess. A number of famous names emerged at the turn of the 19th century. Thomas Inch, still remembered today for his Grip Strength. and his Challenge Dumbbell, known as the Inch Dumbbell, that "has defied thousands of strong men over the last hundred years... Many a strength athlete tried but failed to break it off the ground.". Other notable names in this genre were Louis Cyr, Joseph Greenstein, Louis Uni, famously able to knockout a horse with a single punch - an event popular in this era. In the 20th century, strength sports began to be codified into weightlifting and the like. However, feats of strength akin to the circus performances continued to have their place. In 1957 the Olympic gold medal winner, Paul Anderson backlifted 6,270 pounds as a one-off feat. David Prowse was famous in 1964 for his lifting the famed 785 pounds Dinnie Stones, the first man to do so since Donald Dinnie himself a century earlier.
Prowse became more famous still for playing Darth Vader in Star Wars appearing in several public information films commissioned by the Central Office of Information which instructed children on how to cross the road. The late 20th century saw the emergence of strength athletics. Combining formalised strength events found in Highland Games, with elements of powerlifting and weightlifting, along with an eclectic selection of events involving the lifting of rocks, pulling vehicles, this modern spectacle has in the popular imagination taken the mantle of the strongmen of old. Many events are based on the older circus feats. For many the terms strongman and strength athlete are interchangeable although emphasis on the latter in sport specific literature has attempted to maintain a distinction; the most famous event is one of the oldest, namely the World's Strongest Man competition, still described by a number of respected authorities in the sport as the premier event in strongman. The concept behind "The World's Strongest Men", as it was named, was developed in 1977 for CBS by Langstar Inc.
David Webster, a Scot who received an OBE for his services to sport, was the head coordinator of the competition from its inception. Dr Douglas Edmunds, seven-times Scottish shot and discus champion and twice world caber champion worked with Webster and when David Webster retired from his position Edmunds took over; these two men were responsible for choosing the events. They selected men who had shown prowess in the mainstream fields of strength sports such as the heavy field athletics events, such as shot put, as well as powerlifters and wrestlers; the idea was to create a spectacle that would test the purveyors of these now disparate disciplines against one another on the elements that remained common to all, strength. The show was a great success making household names of men such as Geoff Capes, Bill Kazmaier and Jón Páll Sigmarsson, it was replicated at national level as well, with events such as Britain's Strongest Man first being televised in 1979 by the BBC. In the meantime, in 1982, CBS sold the rights to the BBC, who in turn sold the rights to TWI.
In the early days, the competitors were shifting from unpaid amateur sports to what was deemed a professional sporting activity. To maintain the competitive base as well tapping the obvious public interest, other events sprang up and by the mid-1980s a number of other international gatherings had become regular features, most notably the World Muscle Power Championships and th
Telephone number
A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a fixed-line telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network or other public and private networks. A telephone number serves as an address for switching telephone calls using a system of destination code routing. Telephone numbers are entered or dialed by a calling party on the originating telephone set, which transmits the sequence of digits in the process of signaling to a telephone exchange; the exchange completes the call either to another locally connected subscriber or via the PSTN to the called party. Telephone numbers are assigned within the framework of a national or regional telephone numbering plan to subscribers by telephone service operators, which may be commercial entities, state-controlled administrations, or other telecommunication industry associations.
Telephone numbers were first used in 1879 in Lowell, when they replaced the request for subscriber names by callers connecting to the switchboard operator. Over the course of telephone history, telephone numbers had various lengths and formats, included most letters of the alphabet in leading positions when telephone exchange names were in common use until the 1960s. Telephone numbers are dialed in conjunction with other signaling code sequences, such as vertical service codes, to invoke special telephone service features; when telephone numbers were first used they were short, from one to three digits, were communicated orally to a switchboard operator when initiating a call. As telephone systems have grown and interconnected to encompass worldwide communication, telephone numbers have become longer. In addition to telephones, they have been used to access other devices, such as computer modems and fax machines. With landlines and pagers falling out of use in favor of all-digital always-connected broadband Internet and mobile phones, telephone numbers are now used by data-only cellular devices, such as some tablet computers, digital televisions, video game controllers, mobile hotspots, on which it is not possible to make or accept a call.
The number contains the information necessary to identify uniquely the intended endpoint for the telephone call. Each such endpoint must have a unique number within the public switched telephone network. Most countries use fixed-length numbers and therefore the number of endpoints determines the necessary length of the telephone number, it is possible for each subscriber to have a set of shorter numbers for the endpoints most used. These "shorthand" or "speed calling" numbers are automatically translated to unique telephone numbers before the call can be connected; some special services have their own short numbers The dialing plan in some areas permits dialing numbers in the local calling area without using area code or city code prefixes. For example, a telephone number in North America consists of a three-digit area code, a three-digit central office code, four digits for the line number. If the area has no area code overlays or if the provider allows it, seven-digit dialing may be permissible for calls within the area, but some areas have implemented mandatory ten-digit dialing.
Other special phone numbers are used for high-capacity numbers with several telephone circuits a request line to a radio station where dozens or hundreds of callers may be trying to call in at once, such as for a contest. For each large metro area, all of these lines will share the same prefix, the last digits corresponding to the station's frequency, callsign, or moniker. In the international telephone network, the format of telephone numbers is standardized by ITU-T recommendation E.164. This code specifies that the entire number should be 15 digits or shorter, begin with a country prefix. For most countries, this is followed by an area code or city code and the subscriber number, which might consist of the code for a particular telephone exchange. ITU-T recommendation E.123 describes how to represent an international telephone number in writing or print, starting with a plus sign and the country code. When calling an international number from a landline phone, the + must be replaced with the international call prefix chosen by the country the call is being made from.
Many mobile phones allow the + to be entered directly, by pressing and holding the "0" for GSM phones, or sometimes "*" for CDMA phones. The format and allocation of local phone numbers are controlled by each nation's respective government, either directly or by sponsored organizations. In the United States, each state's public service commission regulates, as does the Federal Communications Commission. In Canada, which shares the same country code with the U. S. regulation is through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Local number portability allows a subscriber to requ
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Media related to Phone books at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionary definition of telephone directory at Wiktionary
