How do people answer the phone in Britain?

We had a party line when I was a kid in Northern Canada.

I seem to remember my sister and I got into taking the mouthpiece out any time the phone rang, so we could eavesdrop without getting caught.

It was sooo boring up there, but we knew what was going on in our remote corner of the world. I suspect all the kids did that!
 

Here's the clip I mentioned.  The engineer here is talking about a house which had been served by a manual switchboard with coded ringing, i.e. every phone would ring so everybody knew when one of the other parties was receiving a call.   It was being changed to an automatic (dial) system, still a party line but with fully selective ringing, i.e. your phone would ring only for your own calls:

Party line anecdote (MP3, ~180KB)

Believe it or not, there were places which used to have numbers such as 39F011 or 42F12.    Geek-of-the-week award goes to anyone who can explain those! 

It looks as though nobody is going to win the prize, so here's the explanation.

These numbers were used on some manual exchanges with those huge multi-way rural party lines.   The first part is the actual line number, and the numbers following the "F" indicate the ringing code for the particular party.  The first digit is the number of long rings, the second digit the number of short rings, third digit is long again, and so on.

So 42F12 means line 42, and the cadence for the party required is one long ring followed by two short rings.   42F11 would be the same line with a ring of long-short, 42F1 would be just a single long ring, and so on.   42F02 would be a short-short ring, since the zero indicates no long rings before the two short.  42F021 would be short-short-long, and so on.

Interesting. I had looked but of course being a man I can't see very well, anyway never found what I was looking for.

Even asked at work but no one knew. The older ones are mainly exforces.

my maiden name is ferguson, so my mom used to answer every once in awhile: 'fergie's funny farm!'

My friends surname was Seal.  His dad put the following message on thier answer machine:

The Seals are not at home right now.  They are all out.........hunting fish!!  It always cracked me up because his dad was just like a big kid.

When my fiance answers the phone he doesn't say anything, he just waits till the person calling starts talking. When he was here for 2 1/2 months I had to tell him to say "hello" when he answers. He couldn't understand why people would hang up so much when he answered. 

You could probably find out the history of telephoning answering at the Darvel Telephone Museum. Who knew there was such a thing? I just saw it on telly!

http://www.mflemmich.freeserve.co.uk/

Who knew there was such a thing?

There are many telephone museums in various places.  Just a few:

The Telephone Museum, Ellsworth, Maine

The Museum of Communications, Seattle, Wash.

The Telephone Historical Centre, Edmonton, Alberta

The Cle Elum Historical Telephone Museum, Cle Elum, Wash.

BellSouth Telephone Museum, Atlanta, Ga.

BellSouth Pioneers Archives & Museum, Macon, Ga.

BT used to have a museum in London near the Embankment, but unfortunately it closed a few years ago.

it's Darrowby 85

I'm dragging up this old thread because I just watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small (which I hadn't seen since high school) and they answered the phone with "Darrowby 85".

So I remembered it correctly!  Even though I can't remember the telephone number we had for five years in Atlanta before moving to the UK.

I know it's pathetic useless trivia, but please allow me my moment of glory. I have so few. 

I'm dragging up this old thread because I just watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small (which I hadn't seen since high school) and they answered the phone with "Darrowby 85".

So I remembered it correctly!  Even though I can't remember the telephone number we had for five years in Atlanta before moving to the UK.

I know it's pathetic useless trivia, but please allow me my moment of glory. I have so few. 

Yaaay that is very well remembered! 

Thanks Britwife!  You're very kind.   

 I run my company from home. If it's my business line i answer with my name, if its my home line i say  hello.

I have caller id on all lines - if someone calls and hides their number i answer....hi, my names Eugene and you're through to the anal warts advice line, how can i help?

I tend not to get sales companies pitch me more than once.....unless the salesperson has warts.

These coversations tend to provoke feelings of both amusement and disdain in equal measure.

At this stage i usually tell them they need a specialist and give them the telephone number of a guy i used to work with...never liked him.

 

I'm dragging up this old thread because I just watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small (which I hadn't seen since high school) and they answered the phone with "Darrowby 85".

So I remembered it correctly!  Even though I can't remember the telephone number we had for five years in Atlanta before moving to the UK.

I know it's pathetic useless trivia, but please allow me my moment of glory. I have so few. 

i watched it recently too (over Christmastime) and smiled, remembering this thread!

I saw an episode of Tales of the Unexpected a few weeks ago where the woman answered the phone with the number, but her husband answered it with 'hello'. I thought of this thread.

I've noticed at my new job people tend to give me their phone numbers as Wycombe 555 555. Possibly because the population here is older. I actually forgot all about this thread!