Further to William F Shillibeer’s letter (‘Some people do not understand’, Your Views, July 24) here is a short history of the changes to London telephone numbers.
From 1922: The first three digits of a seven digit telephone number were represented by the first three letters of the exchange name.
April 6, 1959: 01 codes assigned to London as part of preparations for subscriber trunk dialling (STD)
1966: all figure dialling introduced
May 6, 1990: 01 codes replaced by 071 and 081
April 16, 1995: 071 and 081 codes replaced by 0171 and 0181
June 1, 1999: 0171 and 0181 codes replaced by 020, followed by either the digit 7 or the digit 8
2005: 020 numbers followed by the digit 3 were issued
Barry Flack
Athenaeum Road, Whetstone
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