Welcome to the wacky world of the Post Office!

Personally, find no problems with London's postal areas.

Just a teeny weeny sidenote: -

I mentioned this several months ago...

...do you recall your response?

Edit: Too busy falling off my chair to spell correctly :-)

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Our Zip code system isn't much better and the only one who uses it is the postal service. Should we need one to mail something, we have Zip code maps or look it up online. If we need service, often we will be ask for a cross street - meaning the crossing of two major streets near our location. Phoenix's road system was constructed with a 1 square mile grid but as many streets are numbered instead of named, you can often have a cross street that's much closer.

With an area as big as the Los Angles areas, you need to add the city into the mix because street names and addresses aren't consistence across city boundaries. Much of this is because the cities started small and separate but over the years, their boundaries grew together.

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Our Zip code system isn't much better and the only one who uses it is the postal service. Should we need one to mail something, we have Zip code maps or look it up online. If we need service, often we will be ask for a cross street - meaning the crossing of two major streets near our location. Phoenix's road system was constructed with a 1 square mile grid but as many streets are numbered instead of named, you can often have a cross street that's much closer.

With an area as big as the Los Angles areas, you need to add the city into the mix because street names and addresses aren't consistence across city boundaries. Much of this is because the cities started small and separate but over the years, their boundaries grew together.

Or in Los Angeles' case, many tiny cities got annexed as Loa Angeles had secured a water supply. Hills, rivers and other boundaries that aren't straight always toss curves in. Somewhere, no matter how you assign codes, they have to meet back up so there will be a big jump in numbering.

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Actually, the first 2 digits of the zip code make some sense.

First digit is a group of states that are all contiguous (with the exceptions of 0, and 9. These include some locations not on the continental USA.

The second digit is allocated to a particular state (with the exception of a few states with really low populations that share the second digit and are distinguished in the third.

The third digit is supposed to be a contiguous area as is the fourth. I have less data on these though.

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BOINC WIKI

None of it makes logical sense in the UK, even without government decreed boundary changes. There are places in one county with post codes and telephone codes of the county next door. So that parts of Gtr Manchester are in Lancashire, and parts of Cheshire are in Gtr Manchester. And parts of East Sussex are in Kent and BT will send you bills etc addressed to Kent, also they refuse to change it. So I've told them I don't live in Kent so this bill isn't for me and I'm not paying it. Plus they spelt my name wrong, again, uneducated heathens.

Telephone codes are supposedly alphabetical, so how come
01253 - Blackpool
01254 - Blackburn

Or in Los Angeles' case, many tiny cities got annexed as Loa Angeles had secured a water supply. Hills, rivers and other boundaries that aren't straight always toss curves in. Somewhere, no matter how you assign codes, they have to meet back up so there will be a big jump in numbering.

Chicago once had a similar problem. As smaller towns were annexed, the city came to have multiples of any number of street names. So, a hundred and I-don't-know-how-many years ago, they hired a guy to fix it. He sat down with a map of the city and changed names all over the place so there were no multiples. The city council was so impressed, they only made one change: they named a street for him. I wish I could remember his name.

As some people know, before Zip Codes, large American cities had postal codes. An address might be 1234 Something St., Chicago 21, Illinois; or 5678 Other Ave., New York 38, New York. When Zips came along, these codes were adopted and just had appropriate prefixes added. So that same address in Chicago is now 60621.

Here in the Chicago suburbs, all towns south of a line (probably Chicago's 0 North/South line, Madison St.) are 605xx and north of it are 601xx. Naperville was 60540 for about 20 years. Then they decided it needed more, but the consecutive numbers were already assigned. So, the rest of the city is now 60563-60567.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

None of it makes logical sense in the UK, even without government decreed boundary changes. There are places in one county with post codes and telephone codes of the county next door. So that parts of Gtr Manchester are in Lancashire, and parts of Cheshire are in Gtr Manchester. And parts of East Sussex are in Kent and BT will send you bills etc addressed to Kent, also they refuse to change it. So I've told them I don't live in Kent so this bill isn't for me and I'm not paying it. Plus they spelt my name wrong, again, uneducated heathens.

Telephone codes are supposedly alphabetical, so how come
01253 - Blackpool
01254 - Blackburn

Seems to me I read somewhere that British county lines are periodically moved. Perhaps the postal and phone codes align with the old county lines?

As for Blackburn and Blackpool, perhaps they were assigned by someone with poor spelling skills? (Kind of like the entry for Earth coming under the one for Eccentrica Gallumbits...)

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Seems to me I read somewhere that British county lines are periodically moved. Perhaps the postal and phone codes align with the old county lines?

The Sussex/Kent border hasn't changed in the last 50 years.

Seems to me I read somewhere that British county lines are periodically moved. Perhaps the postal and phone codes align with the old county lines?

The Sussex/Kent border hasn't changed in the last 50 years.

When were the phone codes set up?

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Seems to me I read somewhere that British county lines are periodically moved. Perhaps the postal and phone codes align with the old county lines?

The Sussex/Kent border hasn't changed in the last 50 years.

When were the phone codes set up?

started late 1960's I think, but not finished until 1980's.

But I remember calling my Sussex grandparents in the early 70's and it was still manual connection to their village extn 19.

Actually, the first 2 digits of the zip code make some sense.

First digit is a group of states that are all contiguous (with the exceptions of 0, and 9. These include some locations not on the continental USA.

The second digit is allocated to a particular state (with the exception of a few states with really low populations that share the second digit and are distinguished in the third.

The third digit is supposed to be a contiguous area as is the fourth. I have less data on these though.

As I recall, (anybody want to hunt down the wiki?) The 1st digit is, as John M says, a Regional code. The 2nd and 3rd digits identified a major Postal Distribution Center within that region, and the last 2 identified a City or Post Office within that City, served by tha Distribution Center. City codes were usually assigned alphabetically.

My Zip Code is 93291 (originally 93277, but the city grew).
9 = West Coast Region, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii & Pacific Islands.
32 = Bakersfield, California Distribution Center (now closed, my mail comes out of Santa Clarita CA.)
91 = Visalia downtown Post Office, serving the area north of SR-198 and west of Santa Fe Avenue.

Post Office boxes sometimes have their own zip codes, separate from the Post Office that houses them. Ex: P.O. Boxes at the Downtown Visalia Post Office (the original 93277, now 93291) have Zip Codes 93278. P.O. Boxes at the new Main Post Office (current 93277) are 93279. Only a government efficiency project...

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

The best political rant seen from you to date. So what is the problem?

People know how to contact you & know where you live so regardless of what number or postcode you have, they call or arrive...

...job done!

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The best political rant seen from you to date. So what is the problem?

People know how to contact you & know where you live so regardless of what number or postcode you have, they call or arrive...

...job done!

But sometimes they don't.

I was supposed to get a large item delivery one day, between 13:00 and 17:00, a couple of months ago. When it didn't get here I phoned the company and they said it was on the truck and thought it should have been delivered well before 19:00. Luckily they managed to contact the driver, who's excuse was "He got to the sign saying he was entering Sussex, and knowing the address post and telephone codes were for a Kent town, thought he was going in the wrong direction" The delivery got to me about 20:30, with a driver who didn't have enough hours left to return home.
Why he didn't call me I will never know.

Why he didn't call me I will never know.

Very good point. That's not yours or the company's fault but the driver's. As for running out of driving time, again down to the driver.

Before the days of mobile phones, we had to carry a supply of 10p pieces. Any problems call the depot or the customer[Ah they were the good old days)...

...again, job done!

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Historically, Sussex was the home of the South Saxons, as Essex was to the East Saxons, and Wessex was to the West Saxons, and Middlesex was to the Middle Saxons. The North Saxons lived in Nosex which is why they died out.

Good one!

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East Sussex from Kent, Seven Oaks area, if I remember correctly.

Over here, at least in Illinois (the states do have some say over this), as demand for new numbers increased, the phone company(ies) first divided the area codes. The whole Chicago area had been 312. They changed the suburbs to 708. Then they divided 708 into 708, 630, and 847, and 312 was divided such that it was for a small area downtown, plus City of Chicago lines all over the city (the city already had two whole 3-digit exchanges to itself) and the rest became 773. Yes, businesses had to reprint every time (where I work, they gave us business cards with no area code at all just as the overlays rolled out). This still wasn't enough, so the companies proposed overlay area codes. Somebody (probably the new startup phone companies that would be assigned these numbers) protested because no one would want them because then <GASP> people would have to dial 1-ten-digits to call next door if it was a different area code. The solution they came up with? EVERYONE has to dial 1-ten-digits, even to call a number in the same area code. "Fairness." (At this point, I don't know why we still have to start with the 1, but we do, at least on landlines. I never use the 1 on my cell. I suppose maybe as they run short of numbers again, they'll start using a 2 instead of the 1.) Anyway, all of the areas now have overlays; I think 847 may have two of them.

Meanwhile, the belt around the traditional 312, 815, has not changed at all that I know of. Lower population, I guess.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

(the city already had two whole 3-digit exchanges to itself)

I assume that a USA 3 digit exchange has the same capacity as in the UK. Before electronic exchanges came along in the 60's, each electro-mechanical Strowger exchange unit was housed in a separate building and had 10,000 lines i.e. providing 4 digit individual phone lines. The later TXE4 electronic exchanges had 40,000 lines, and therefore incorporated four exchange units per building installation. Later System Y (Axe10) digital exchanges had 60,000 lines. The replacement 21CN is VoIP and based on types of network nodes.

It does seem that Telecom companies on both sides of the pond underestimate demand for telecommunication services, which is surprising. And of course I should have mentioned before, that in 1995 when London went from 071 & 081 to 0171 & 0181, that the other main cities also had an extra 1 added as well, so they are now

0121 Birmingham
0131 Edinburgh
0141 Glasgow
0151 Liverpool
0161 Manchester
0191 Newcastle

I have wondered before that if you were installing a National telecommunications system in a country from scratch, whether it would be feasible to just install a WiFi unit in each street, and just give all your customers a wiFi enabled router. No underground or overhead cabling needed to the customers.

I'm not a complete expert on the history, but as I understand it, in the early days exchanges had 2 letters and a number, and then the line had 4 more numbers. I'm also given to understand that someone very early on decided that the best way to make international calling simple was to sell American equipment to other countries (also a good way to make money, I suppose: sell them the first bunch cheap and they keep coming back for more). Here in Naperville, there were 2 exchanges, ELmwood 5 and ELmwood 7. Because Bell Labs had a major presence in town, we were actually fairly late in getting direct dialing, but then we got a very early ESS when we needed a 3rd exchange. I think the ESS was in a separate building. Then when more exchanges were added, they were all in that same ESS. Somewhere around the time the original AT&T was split up, I think, the original 355 and 357 were transferred over to whatever computer system came after the ESS. Now we have number portability between land lines and mobiles, so the EL5 number assigned to my parents after they married in 1962 now rings on my cell.

Seems to me I heard of places in Africa doing just that, more or less. Well, the plan I heard some years ago was to skip land lines altogether and just give everyone a mobile.

I should quit here; I'm falling asleep.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Additional:

An organization with a Centrex can dial from one internal line to another with just the 4 digits. City of Chicago, having overflowed a 10,000 number exchange, has/had a Centrex with 5 digit dialling.

Since my employer went to IP phones, the external prefix doesn't have to be the same for every line in our system.

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David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Captain's log - supplemental

In the UK, BT markets this service as Featureline although it still refers to it internally as Centrex.

In the USA the usage of Centrex lines has fallen over the past decade from 16.5 million in 2002 to 10.7 million in 2008 as users transition to IP-PBX through VoIP. Centrex continues to be used by large institutions, government agencies, and universities as most of the equipment has already been paid for, though leasing Centrex lines may be more expensive.

As an aside, as I mentioned earlier, London has changed to (020)7xxx xxxx for inner London and (020)8xxx xxxx for outer London. And officially, if for example you are on an outer London phone number, and you want to call someone else in the same area, you only need to dial 8xxx xxxx omitting the 020. But I find that many times you can only connect if you dial the full 11 digit number! So what is that all about then? The excuse is here full codes needed although I can assure them that is applies to a lot more than just burglar alarms.

Want another one?

Some people I know in the UK with mobile numbers, cannot be dialled unless you use the full +44 international code as well, which should not be necessary within the UK.

Couple more? OK.

If you're dialling a UK mobile number from overseas eg 07123 456789, you have to knock off the '0' and add the 44 in it's place, so dialling 44 7123 456789.

If you are dialling a UK landline number it is the same, but in the States you need also need to add the national exit code as well as the destination country inward code as well. So an outer London landline number of (020)8123 4567 becomes 011 44 20 8123 4567. Confused, you will be.

You'd think that in the 21C they would have sorted all this silly nonsense out by now, apparently not. The way that BT have handled phone numbers in the last 20 years in the UK is a bloody disgrace quite frankly. And the ISO 3166 people in Geneva haven't helped either. As I said before technically you can't fault BT, how they manage to get superfast Broadband down copper wires designed for analogue voice calls is amazing. It all went wrong when they let bean counters run the Company instead of Engineers. Blame Project Sovereign in 1990 for that when British Telecom was relaunched as BT.

Supplemental - End

First Officers Log - Addendum

Should have remained the GPO!

Addendum - End

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