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Author Topic: Home wiring rules & regs  (Read 20571 times)

sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #15 on: February 23, 2016, 12:03:53 PM »

I know, due to "meddling by Europe"*, that 112 is mapped to 999.

Not long ago, I was making a call.  It answered very quickly, the voice said 'Emergency, which service do you want'.  I stuttered and apologised (*), explaining that I had clearly mis-dialled, and the call ended quickly and amicably.

Being a fancy DECT phone it kept a log of dialled numbers so I could see that I had indeed mis-dialled.  What I couldn't figure out was why I had been connected to '999' when it didn't even contain these digits, let alone commence with them.   Later the penny dropped, I'd probably been 'stung' by one of these pesky mappings. >:(

Also managed once to literally dial 999 by mistake.  My employer's PBX employed the usual, dial '9' for an outgoing line.  For some reason I didn't think the '9' had worked.  So I pressed '9' again, and again, and again...   :-[

* My understanding is, if you ever do call Emergency by mistake, always explain - don't just hang up, else they might be left wondering if somebody is in trouble.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #16 on: February 23, 2016, 12:18:03 PM »

Incidentally, while the reasons for choosing '999' have been explained, it does have a downside that explains why it wasn't universally adopted... in the days of rotary dialling, it took a significantly longer time to dial 999 than 112, or even 911.    In a true emergency, these extra seconds might count.   :-\
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renluop

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #17 on: February 23, 2016, 12:55:05 PM »

.... The only downside was the circuits were un-amplified so could be quite faint when concatenating them.

OT, but in the bank that employed me the larger branches could have concatenated machines. IIRC the machine at the end of the line was always the slowest.
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licquorice

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #18 on: February 23, 2016, 02:25:19 PM »

Incidentally, while the reasons for choosing '999' have been explained, it does have a downside that explains why it wasn't universally adopted... in the days of rotary dialling, it took a significantly longer time to dial 999 than 112, or even 911.    In a true emergency, these extra seconds might count.   :-\

Yes, 2.7 seconds for 999 or 0.3 seconds for 111.  Dial speed is 10pps
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atkinsong

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #19 on: February 23, 2016, 06:17:40 PM »

Wasn't there also something called "back dialling" or making a connection somehow with a not completely inserted coin?


Yes indeed. From memory it relied on the fact that to enable 999 calls for free, whenever the dial was taken all the way round (i.e. the 9 digit), the coin mechanism was bypassed. So to dial say the digit 5, you would put your finger in 9, take it all the way round, then leave your finger in the dial and take it back as far as the 4 digit. This had the effect of pulsing the line 5 times thus dialling a 5, then all the way round again and back to the next digit, letting the dial go back to 9 minus the digit you want. Bit tricky to do but it worked!
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licquorice

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #20 on: February 23, 2016, 06:29:19 PM »

Yes, I had forgotten about that trick. Thanks for reminding me.
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HPsauce

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #21 on: February 23, 2016, 06:31:52 PM »

Or just tap the rest......  ;)
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Black Sheep

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2016, 06:56:21 PM »

I'm calling the Police ..... this forum is riddled with ne'er-do-wells !!  ;)
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HPsauce

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #23 on: February 23, 2016, 10:08:33 PM »

@BS, were you around in the sixties? As a destitute student back then I never ever paid for phone calls from a call box, the whole system was riddled with engineers "little handy tricks" and in "certain circles" they were very well known.
PS That included international calls.  :-X
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Dray

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sheddyian

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #25 on: February 23, 2016, 10:26:05 PM »

Regarding emergency service numbers, I beleive that in New Zealand the emergency number is 111, and has been for a long time.

This didn't cause problems with accidental pulse dialling, because their rotary dial phones are reversed.

So (I think...) dialling a 1 actually causes 9 pulses.

Which makes me wonder if the whole point of that setup was to stop exactly the criminal behaviour of ne'er do-wells back in the day, as it'd make tapping the receiver rest a lot harder - 9 taps for 1, 8 taps for 2, 7 taps for 3 etc.

Ian
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sheddyian

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #26 on: February 24, 2016, 12:27:42 AM »

I had nagging doubts I was imagining the NZ rotary dial phone thing, but a quick Google confirms it.

Attached :

In red, a shiny BT issue rotary pulse dialling phone

In (ivory?), a New Zealand rotary pulse dialling phone.

So, dialling 999 on a UK phone creates 9 pulses three times.
Dialling 111 on an NZ phone creates 9 pulses three times!

Ian
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Black Sheep

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #27 on: February 24, 2016, 07:02:43 AM »

@BS, were you around in the sixties? As a destitute student back then I never ever paid for phone calls from a call box, the whole system was riddled with engineers "little handy tricks" and in "certain circles" they were very well known.
PS That included international calls.  :-X

I've been around since the mid-sixties ...... so although not part of the criminality at that time, I tried to make up for it in the 70's.  ;) ;D
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atkinsong

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #28 on: February 24, 2016, 07:42:52 AM »

Or just tap the rest......  ;)

That was for the Button A, Button B boxes. Back dialling worked with the newer STD boxes!
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licquorice

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Re: Home wiring rules & regs
« Reply #29 on: February 24, 2016, 08:26:47 AM »

Or just tap the rest......  ;)

That was for the Button A, Button B boxes. Back dialling worked with the newer STD boxes!

There would be no point in doing either on the newer boxes, they were pay on answer so the dial was operative as normal anyway.
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