Scotland Chronological History – 1900s
1901
Municipal telephony is provided by Corporation of Glasgow, covering an area of 140 square miles from
Clydebank to Kilsyth. The council runs the city's telephones for the next five years, before selling to the
Post Office for £305,000.
1916
The buddies get on the blower as Scotland's first automatic exchange opens in Paisley with capacity for
1600 subscribers. It's the first by a long way and it's not until 1924 that the opening of Dundee Central
sparks off the general advancement of automatic telephones in Scotland. It means that people on the
same exchange can call each other without calling the operator. Meanwhile, manual exchanges have
opened up all over Scotland and in rural areas switchboards are frequently installed in shops or private
houses. Many exchanges close at night and in others, someone sleeps by the switchboard and is woken
by a bell when a call comes through. In manual exchanges, operators connect calls by plugging cords into
rows of sockets on the front of switchboards. Small electric bulbs or indicators with moving flaps are used
to show that someone is calling. As the size of switch increases with the demand for service, operators
often have to be a certain minimum height to be able to reach all the sockets.
1922
Bell dies at the age of 75, after an amazing lifetime of invention. Today he is remembered for the
telephone but the fields in which he operated were much wider. He showed fishermen how to produce
fresh water from sea water using a sloping pane of glass to save lives of people lost at sea; six of these
solar energy cells supplied his own home with fresh water; he condensed fog with a wave-powered
bellows; he worked on kites that could lift men and his invention of a wheel-shaped kite was a precursor
to the helicopter. In 1909 his Silver Dart, Canada's first flying machine, took off, powered by a 50
horsepower engine; long before Scotland produced Dolly the Sheep, he increased livestock productivity
by developing a flock of sheep in which ewes bore more twins and triplets; in 1916 Bell designed a
floating concrete dock – the same design was used during the 1944 Normandy landings; in 1920 a
hydrofoil he built skipped over the waves to clock up a fantastic 71mph. Bell is laid to rest in Cape Breton
Island at his estate Beinn Breagh - Gaelic for "beautiful mountain".
1925
The London to Glasgow trunk telephone cable with repeaters is completed to form the backbone of the
British trunk network and kiosks are fitted with A and B buttons for the first time.
1927
Trans-Atlantic telephone service is established using long wave radio transmission. The original tariff is
£15 for three minutes, reducing to £9 the following year.
1931
The first voice frequency telegraphy system with 12 carrier channels is installed between London and
Dundee. Using voice frequency dialling, operators at zone centres are able to dial directly to subscribers
in distant zone centres, avoiding the costs and delays involved with incoming operators.
1936
The Speaking Clock speaks for the first time and the famous Jubilee Kiosk, the traditional red phonebox, is
designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the coronation of King George V.
The first nine-channel short-wave radio link is installed between Stranraer and Belfast.
1937
The Glasgow "Director" system opens with the inauguration of "Halfway" exchange.
1938
The 999 emergency service is established in Scotland and it handles 13,000 calls in its first month - a far
cry from today when 250,000 calls a month are handled by two state-of-the-art call centres in Glasgow
and Inverness. The service was introduced in London the year before following a fire in which five people
died. It experienced its first success within a few days but it wasn't a life-saving operation – a burglar was
caught red-handed thanks to police arriving at the scene within five minutes.
1943
Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, is designed by a Post Office research
branch team headed by Tommy Flowers, helping to hasten the end of the Second World War. So secret is
this work that Churchill orders the complete destruction of Colossus at the end of the war.
1946
The Edinburgh "Director" system is brought into action at Craiglockhart exchange.
1954
An Anglo-Norwegian submarine telephone is laid between Aberdeen and Bergen by the Post Office cable
ship Monarch – the longest submarine cable in the world at a length of 300 nautical miles. A year later
the last Post Office inland Morse telegraph circuit between Barra and South Uist in the Western Isles is
recovered.
1956
The first trans-Atlantic telephone cable is laid between Oban and Newfoundland, a distance of 2240
miles. After crossing Newfoundland, a further submarine cable is used to complete the connection to the
mainland of North America.
1958
The telephone network takes a giant leap forward with the introduction of STD – Subscriber Trunk
Dialling. Callers are at last able to make trunk calls automatically without having to use an operator. The
service is launched by the Queen who dials a call on December 5 from Bristol Central Telephone Exchange
to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh. It travels a distance of 300 miles, the limit for a subscriber trunk call at
the time.
1960
Automatic calling arrives in Scotland as Dundee becomes the city of jute, jam, journalism and STD.
1962
A sky-high era in telecommunications begins with the spectacular launch from Cape Canaveral of Telstar,
the first broadband communications satellite. The day after the launch, it is used to transmit the first
high-definition television pictures across the Atlantic.
1963
International STD (later called IDD) to Europe arrives in Edinburgh and Glasgow and Scotland connects its
500,000th telephone line. The original speaking clock, introduced in 1936, is replaced by new clocks
using a revolving magnetic drum. A competition is held to find a new voice to replace Miss Jane Cain, the
original voice, and it's won by Miss Pat Simmons, a supervisor in a London telephone exchange.
1966
All Figure Numbering is introduced for the first time, initially in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the old
system of using different letters and numbers to identify exchanges is abandoned.
1968
Scotland's first electronic exchange opens at Bishopton, Renfrewshire, and there are modern phones for
modern times. The Trimphone makes its debut and is still fondly remembered today for its entirely new
and lightweight design, boasting many novel features. Despite the conventional bell being replaced with
a tone caller with adjustable volume, the phrase "give me a bell" remains to this day.
1971
Trans-Atlantic dialling is extended and six UK cities, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, are able to dial
direct to the whole of mainland USA by dialling 0101 followed by the USA area code and local number.
Confravision, the world's first public bothway television system giving conference facilities to groups of
people in different cities, is made available by the Post Office at its studios in Glasgow, Birmingham,
Bristol, London and Manchester.
1973
Telephone growth in Scotland gathers momentum as the one millionth customer is signed up.
1975
International subscriber dialling reaches Aberdeen, and the local paper, the Evening Express, dials a city
exile living in Kowloon, four miles from Aberdeen, Hong Kong. "How'd you get me?" said police inspector
Jim Robb, to be told by the reporter: "We just dialled your number. It's a sort of inaugural call from
Aberdeen to Hong Kong." "Incredible," was Jim's response. The reporter went on to dial exiles in Greece
and South Dakota, and the speaking clock in Mississippi, which urged him to take out $10,000 insurance!
1976
Hello girls are consigned to history when the last manual exchange in the UK closes its doors at Portree,
on the Isle of Skye and the UK telephone system is now fully automatic. The advances in the network
eventually mean that customers on the Misty Isle can direct-dial more countries round the world than
telephone users on Manhattan Island in New York! Trans-horizon radio, using tropospheric scatter, is
inaugurated to provide telephone links between North Sea oil platforms and the mainland, and the
Scottish Radiophone service is introduced. Scottish customers are able to punch numbers instead of
dialling them, thanks to the latest phone, the Keyphone. Its most striking and innovative feature is a
keyboard replacing the familiar dial, making it easier to dial long STD numbers.
1979
Scotland notches up yet another UK milestone as customers in Glenkindie in Aberdeenshire become the
first subscribers to be connected directly to a digital exchange. The STD system is completed, allowing
direct dialling between all UK subscribers, and radiopaging makes its Scottish debut.
1980
Post Office Telecoms becomes British Telecom, the trading identity "Telecom Scotland" is introduced and
the Prestel Viewdata comes to Scotland. Scotland achieves a world No. 1 listing when the first, purposedesigned optical fibre submarine cable is laid in Loch Fyne.
1981
British Telecom severs its links with the Post Office, becoming a totally separate public corporation on
October 1. Among its first achievements are the introduction of the first cashless, card operated
payphone and phones for sale rather than rental. Radiopaging is extended to give a virtually nationwide
service.
1982
Mercury enters the fray and the Government announces its intention to sell up to 51% of British Telecom
to the public, the first example of the privatisation of a public utility. Kenneth Baker, Ministry for
Industry and Information Technology, introduces the Telecommunications Bill, saying: "The Bill creates
freedom from Treasury and ministerial control. It also gives freedom to BT to grow, to operate overseas
and to make acquisitions: the market is growing so quickly that BT can expand only by becoming a free,
independent company." The first fibre optic cable in Scotland is laid between Aberdeen and its satellite
suburb Kingswells and further fibre projects are planned elsewhere in Aberdeenshire, as well as Perthshire
and Argyll. The inland telegram service in Scotland is superseded by telemessages, with overnight
delivery, and British Telecom publishes the first national directory of facsimile users' numbers.
1983
British Telecom's first cordless phone brings more customer freedom to Scotland. The Hawk uses a radio
to link the mobile extension set with the customer's telephone line at distance of up to 600ft. Display
Page, the first British Telecom radiopager with a digital message display, bleeps for the first time. A 10digit liquid crystal display on the new pager displays the caller's phone number or message.
1984
The Telecommunications Bill, delayed the previous year because of the General Election, receives Royal
Assent on April 12, and 50.2% of the new company is offered for sale to the public and employees in
November. In the advertising world, the singing and dancing Buzby, which has captured the imagination
of the public for the past five years, is finally given the bird. Among the commercials which follow are the
"It's for you-hoo" series of ads. Ships using Inmarsat, British Telecom International's maritime satellite
system, are able to access a wide range of computers and databases around the world, thanks to BTI's
international packet switching service, IPSS. The telephone directory is redesigned and launched as the
Phone Book; Trainphone, the first public payphone on a train, is introduced on a trial basis, and the first
telephone designed and manufactured by British Telecom is unveiled, in the shape of the one-piece
Slimtel.
1985
Cellnet, the British Telecom and Securicor joint venture cellular radio service, is born, replacing the
existing radiophone service. The new speaking clock is inaugurated as the voice of Brian Cobby, an
assistant supervisor in an exchange in Brighton, replaces Pat Simmons, the voice of the clock for the
previous 22 years. The new clock is digital with no moving parts and much more reliable and accurate
than before. Integrated Digital Access, British Telecom's first ISDN-type service, makes its first
appearance and the first steps to improve the much-maligned payphone service in Scotland begin, with
the launch of a UK-wide £160m investment programme which is to transform the service.
1986
Computerisation of directory enquiries is completed, replacing the existing microfiche system, and
response times to callers' enquiries become even faster. DIY telephone extensions are permitted for the
first time and British Telecom kits are on sale in its Scottish shops. Glasgow Central becomes the first
exchange in Greater Glasgow to go digital.
1987
TV personality Noel Edmonds opens the UK's 250th digital exchange at John O'Groats and turns the
UXD5 exchange into a multi-coloured talk shop, with calls to entrepreneur Richard Branson and grand
prix driver Nigel Mansell. The down-to-earth Virgin boss was exactly that - plans for him to take the call
in a hot air balloon 27,000ft above the Atlantic were aborted when bad weather grounded him in the
States. Just 18 months earlier Edmonds had opened the UK's 100th rural digital exchange, at
Glenurquhart in Inverness-shire. British Telecom went on to invest more than £45 million on exchange
conversions in the North of Scotland over the next six years. A star is born and Beattie takes the nation by
storm. Maureen Lipman's Jewish granny goes on to star in 32 TV commercials and contributes the word
"ology" to the English language. An £87m programme to provide itemised billing for all customers is
announced, and British Telecom's research laboratories at Martlesham demonstrate the world's first
instantaneous translation of speech by a computer.
1988
The forerunner of Chargecard hits the streets of Scotland in the shape of the British Telecom credit card.
With a secret PIN and a unique account number, customers can make calls from any telephone and have
the cost added to their next home or office telephone bill.
1989
The Highlands and Islands Initiative, a £20 million joint venture between BT and Highlands and Islands
Enterprise, is announced and will bring an advanced digital network to 80% of businesses in the North of
Scotland, years before similar rural areas in Europe and many city centres. HIE estimates that over the
years the initiative has created more than 1600 jobs. The phone goes up, up and away with the
commercial debut on a British Airways 747 of Skyphone, the world's first satellite telephone
communications system for airline passengers. British Telecom introduces the world-leading Customer
Service Guarantee, which pays compensation to customers if they are without service for more than two
clear working days because of BT's failure to install a line on an agreed date or repair a line promptly.
Automatic Voice Response is introduced into the directory enquiries service to give a faster response to
customers. Actress Julie Berry's voice is digitally recorded speaking all British Telecom's 6000 exchange
names, plus the full set of numbers and number combinations. While the AVR equipment is passing the
number to the enquiring caller, the operator is already talking to the next customer. ISDN 2, a new
advanced service capable of carrying voice, data and pictures at high speed, comes on the market.
1990
Another UK milestone is completed in Scotland, as BT's long distance network goes totally digital with the
closure of the electro-mechanical exchange at Thurso. This completes the trunk lines modernisation
programme, begun back in 1985, and the UK becomes the first country in the world to have a fullydigital trunk network.
1991
The Government's White Paper "Competition and Choice: Telecommunications policy for the 1990s" is
issued, ending the duopoly which had been shared by British Telecom and Mercury since November
1983. The new, more open and fairer policy allows customers to acquire telecoms services from
competing providers using a variety of technologies. And reselling is born - independent retail companies
are now permitted to bulk-buy telecoms capacity and sell it in packages to business and domestic users.
On April 2 British Telecom is laid to rest, re-emerging blinking into the sunshine as BT, trading as British
Telecommunications plc. It's a company ready to face the competitive challenges of the 90s following a
huge programme of change called Sovereign, to reflect the company's commitment to meeting customer
needs - "The customer is King". The new BT is launched with a new corporate identity suitable for a
quality company in a highly competitive world marketplace. And the changes pave the way to give BT the
foundation to achieve its vision – to be the most successful telecommunications group in the world.
Braille and large print bills are offered for the first time, the half-way stage is reached in switching local
exchanges to digital working and BT appoints its first woman board member.
1992
The world-leading BT Commitment is launched with compensation for missed appointments and
customers whose service is not restored by the end of the next working day after the fault is reported.
Scottish newspapers and TV stations carry adverts telling everyone that "We Put Our Customers First". A
network of malicious calls bureaux is set up throughout the country, with Scottish callers being handled
sympathetically by specially-trained staff at a bureau in Dundee. The Dundee centre deals with around
1000 calls a week from worried BT customers. More than half are dealt with through advice and help but
some have to change their number and others have traces put on their lines to catch the phone pests.
The good news today is that more and more people are being caught, cautioned and convicted of making
malicious calls. BT clocks up a world first in the Highlands and Islands as 10 directory enquiry operators
working in and around Inverness begin a year working from home in a unique teleworking experiment.
Homework is no chore for the operators, who are linked to the exchange by videophones which they use
to chat to supervisors. For the next 12 months, customers dialling 192 in the north of Scotland could
have their queries answered by operators like mother-of-two Mrs Margaret Duncan, sitting at a specially
adapted computer terminal in the kitchen of her detached home in Forres. The commuting time saved
cuts their working day by up to two hours and they take up new hobbies or spend more time with their
families. The experiment goes on to facilitate the development of new systems to satisfy the increasing
demand for alternative ways of working. A payphone at Cockburnspath in East Lothian becomes the first
in the UK to be powered by the latest, high-efficiency, solar panels. Three others follow soon afterwards
in North-east Scotland - at the Pass of Ballater, Cambus o'May and Lhanbryde. The kiosks are fitted with
a light-sensitive device which switches the light on at dusk, and turns it off at daybreak. BT began
experimenting with solar power in 1989, establishing 40 kiosks nationwide. A hot summer ensured the
trial went well initially, but with the onset of winter around half the panels failed! The village of
Sandhaven near Fraserburgh dials up its fifteen minutes of fame when its payphone becomes the first in
the UK to be lit by wind and solar power. Still with payphones, the last A&B button box on mainland
Britain is consigned to history, on the windswept shore of Loch Eriboll in Sutherland. Built in 1954 on the
road between Tongue and Durness in one of the loneliest spots in Britain, it would have cost an incredible
£2,600 if normal construction had been used. Instead, it was decided to operate the service via a VHF
radio link at a more modest cost of £720. The story goes that when a US fleet anchored in the deepwater loch, one of the vessels blocked the radio link to the box, and an American admiral received the
unusual request: "Would you mind moving one of your battleships a bit so that we can make a phone
call?" BT's 100,000th public payphone comes into service.
1993
A major alliance with MCI of the United States is hailed as "the deal of the century," and the Government
sells the remainder of its shares in BT, completing the privatisation process.
1994
Peak rate charging is abolished, long distance charges are cut and BT receives the world's largest quality
registration. BT begins trials of Interactive TV services. Caller Display and Call Return services are
launched after successful trials in Moray, Perthshire and Edinburgh, and Scottish customers now know
who's calling before they answer the phone. A&B buttons, which were introduced in 1925 and survived
many kiosk changes, finally bow out with the decommissioning of the last unit on the remote Shetland
island of Papa Stour. Time and technology catch up with Papa Stour 224 as islander Ted Gray uses a
handful of old 5p pieces to make a final call, watched by an audience of islanders, TV crews, bemused
sheep and a gaggle of geese. In button boxes, callers pushed the A button to deposit their coins into the
cashbox and transmit the call. If the call could not be connected or there was no reply, they pushed the B
button to get their money back. The mechanism was originally designed to detect the presence of two
pennies by a weighing operation. The operator instruction "Press Button B and try again later" became a
national catchphrase. BT launches the UK's biggest ever marketing campaign with top actor Bob Hoskins
telling us "It's good to talk" and he hits the spot, because each time he pops up on our TV screens, the
number of calls on the network goes up!
1995
BT becomes the first major national telephone operator anywhere in the world to change its entire
network over to per second pricing by abolishing unit-based charging for all its customers. A new era of
split-second timing and pricing makes it easier for customers to see the cost of calls, which have been cut
by more than £1 billion since December 1993. The new era is ushered in at Crawford in Lanarkshire on
June 23 when BT switches off the last of its old mechanical exchanges and replaces it with state-of-theart computerised technology. Crawford Primary School nine-year-olds Lyn Anderson and Adam Fordyce
switch on the new digital exchange seconds after engineers slice through cables to cut off the old unit
and silence the familiar clicking and whirring sounds of calls being connected. Strowger is no more! BT's
initiative has been made possible by its £20 billion investment in the UK phone network over the past 11
years - enough to build two Channel Tunnels. More than £2 billion has been invested in Scotland, where
current investment is running at £500,000 every working day. In 1984 BT inherited a network of more
than 6,700 exchanges – 1,185 in Scotland - many of which were based on electro-mechanical
technology developed 100 years ago. All have been replaced by modern exchanges and a network of
computerised billing centres which can charge calls with the precision required for per second pricing.
Scottish customers begin to come to terms with the extra digit "1" which has been added to dialling
codes to meet burgeoning demand for new numbers.
1996
Scotland starts to surf with the launch of BT Internet and BT clicks open its own world wide website,
bt.com following development work by staff in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Smart payphones and
phonecards are launched, with an embedded chip which stores talk time.
1997
BT agrees to sell its 20 per cent stake in MCI to Worldcom.
1998
BT Scotland is officially launched on 20 June before 500 invited guests in a marquee in the grounds of
Holyrood Palace, just yards from the future location of the Scottish Parliament. It's the first company to
be given permission for an event in the Palace grounds and the site is particularly significant, because BT
Scotland has been formed in response to the creation of the new Parliament. In an editorial on the
setting up of BT Scotland, the Edinburgh Evening News comments: "Such a tremendous boost from BT
can do the new Parliament's early standing nothing but good. " BT Scotland unveils a five-year
investment programme in which it will invest in its Scottish network at the rate of £200 every single
minute of every single day including: £100 million to improve data links around the country to meet
increasing demand for data communications and Internet services; £20 million to upgrade Cellnet
coverage in Scotland, in addition to £20m already committed to upgrades in the Highlands and Islands;
£5million to bring enhanced services to 220 digital exchanges in the Borders, Dumfries and Galloway and
Tayside, on top of £8m to upgrade 200 exchanges in the Highlands and Islands; £400 million on
additional network capacity and new technology. A £59 million exchange modernisation programme in
Glasgow is completed when the last 5,700 customers in the city become fully digital. The upgrading
programme, which kicked off in 1986, has allowed over 460,000 customers throughout the Glasgow
area to benefit from clearer lines and faster call connections. AT&T and BT announce a $10bn global
venture to serve all the communications needs of multinational business customers and carriers, and BT
takes the wraps off a free e-mail address service for all to mark the Millennium.
1999
Hampden gets its roar back as BT Scotland becomes its first official sponsor in a £5 million commercial
partnership which will run until at least 2008. The new South Stand is named The BT Scotland Stand. BT
Scotland invests £120m, underlining its commitment to Scotland, by opening two new flagship offices in
Glasgow and Edinburgh and upgrading properties in Aberdeen, Dundee and Inverness. The Glasgow
building is named after Alexander Bain, father of the modern fax machine, who was born on a croft at
Watten, Caithness, in 1810. His inventions in telegraphy led to him being credited with the first facsimile
transmission, when his chemical recording telegraph transmitted 282 words in 52sec between Paris and
Lille. Not content with that, he also patented a fire alarm, a railway signal, a loudspeaker and an electric
clock, and his subsequent invention of the electro-magnetic pendulum led to Greenwich Mean Time
being adopted in the UK. The Edinburgh office commemorates the work of another prolific Scottish
inventor – the man who started it all, Alexander Graham Bell. We began this potted history of
telecommunications with the nine little words first spoken on the telephone by Bell, and it's fitting that
we end it as BT Scotland pays tribute to the man whose inventiveness and foresight was the catalyst that
created the fastest-moving and most exciting industry in the world today.