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Birmingham Corporation pages from 1945 telephone directory

Some interesting entries showing the activitives and locations of the BCS too.

What is the meaning of the 'star' by the number? Does it indicate a switchboard?

I note that Ancestry.com mentions the introductions to telephone directories and the extra information that they contain but then only provides a surname search tool. (I don'y have an Ancestry account so couldn't investigate further).
 
Ancestry has directories from the 1880s to 1984 but not every one for every area. You can search by name only but you can open any directory and scroll to pages that contain businesses eg Birmingham Corporaton - I have done it frequently.
I would imagine the * is a switchboard as the same number appears by several different employees.
 
pjmburns said:
Ancestry has directories from the 1880s to 1984 but not every one for every area. You can search by name only but you can open any directory and scroll to pages that contain businesses eg Birmingham Corporaton - I have done it frequently.
I would imagine the * is a switchboard as the same number appears by several different employees.
Click to expand...
Spargone said:
Some interesting entries showing the activitives and locations of the BCS too.

What is the meaning of the 'star' by the number? Does it indicate a switchboard?

I note that Ancestry.com mentions the introductions to telephone directories and the extra information that they contain but then only provides a surname search tool. (I don'y have an Ancestry account so couldn't investigate further).
Click to expand...
The * symbol meant at the time that the subscriber rents a number of auxiliary numbers that are tried first before the engaged tone is given. Yes, the BCS entries certainly show the extent of the Co-op's reach and somewhere I have posted TASCO's entries as BCS didn't have the city to itself! From memory the other larger chains were G Mason's and Wrensons.
 
mikeya said:
The * symbol meant at the time that the subscriber rents a number of auxiliary numbers that are tried first before the engaged tone is given. Yes, the BCS entries certainly show the extent of the Co-op's reach and somewhere I have posted TASCO's entries as BCS didn't have the city to itself! From memory the other larger chains were G Mason's and Wrensons.
Click to expand...
Thank you for that. In practice I would expect there to be a switchboard of some sort behind these starred numbers, (of course there is no reason why a single line number shouldn't serve a switchboard for internal use either). The 'auxiliary' numbers would only differ in the last digit, which is effectively ignored by the PO exchange when switching the call.
That reminds me that it was quite common for companies to write something like '9 lines' on their vans and letterheads, though what use that was to their customer I don't know. Perhaps it just showed that they weren't a 'one man' company? The other giveway for a large company was that their number usually ended in the digit '0', those 'in the know' saved time by dialling '1' instead! Having said that I worked for a company whose number was '1234' and I bet they had more than ten lines, (the PO term was 'eleven and over group').
 
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