Re: Old London Telephone Exchange Names [telecom]

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This is a reply to a very interesting post of more than 10 years ago. I got interested in this when I spotted an old advertisement painted on the side of a building quoting a Macaulay phone number. Macaulay was the Clapham exchange - the Macaulay family were connected to Clapham (Zachary was a prominent member of the Clapham Sect who campaigned for Abolition of the Slave Trade). My telephone number is

(Long quoted article removed - it's available at

I used to wonder why so many phone numbers start with "0" in Great Britain, until someone told me that the zero is in the first position on a dial phone there. That means that both U.S. and British number start with a single dial pulse when using a dial telephone instrument, but each country associated different numbers with it.

Bill Horne Moderator