I raise the question, what does the telephone dial look
> like in areas with alphabets different fron our own, such
> as Cairo, Egypt, or Beijing, China, or Oslo, Norway?
Here are a couple of foreign dials: Sweden ...
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Note that the Swedish dial is offset one pulse from the NANP dial. 1 pulse=0; 2 pulses=1, ... 10 pulses=9. But no letters, so the alphabet issue wasn't a problem.
Denmark ...
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The "9" on the Danish dial corresponds to the 27th and 28th letters of the 29-letter Danish alphabet.
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The embossed design in the center of the dial is the "National Coat of Arms" (as distinguished from the "Royal Coat of Arms").
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I understand that until about 5 years ago there were
> some crank up telephones in use -- in West Virginia --
> with telephone numbers that had 4N-1L-2N. Anyone got
> sharing on this one?
That seems unlikely. I'd be interested in knowing the source of that story.
Numbers in the format you describe (which here on TD we'd write as
4D-1L-2D) were rural party lines served by manual offices.The "4D" is the line number; it could be a 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-digit number. The single letter indicates that it was a party line; for rural multiparty lines, it was usually "F" (for "farm") or "R" (for "rural"). The last two digits indicated the ring cadence. Case in point: my grandfather's phone in Steuben County Indiana used to be
59F03.
There appears to be a return to two party lines in some areas
> because of shortage of lines. e.g . Round Rock, Texas, north of > Austin, TX.
That also seems unlikely. I'd be interested in knowing the source of that story too.
Neal McLain