Greetings all,

No, Australia used the same system as the UK and the US – numbers going anticlockwise from 1 to 0. In New Zealand, they went anticlockwise from 9 to 0.

This is how Wikepedia explains the function of a rotary dial:

To dial a number, the user puts a finger in the corresponding finger hole and rotates the dial clockwise until it reaches the finger stop. The user then pulls out the finger, and a spring in the dial returns it to the resting position. For example, if the user dials "6" on a North American phone, electrical contacts wired through the cam mechanism inside the phone will open and close six times as the dial returns to home position, thus sending six pulses to the central office.

Different pulse systems are used, varying from country to country. For example, Sweden uses one pulse to signal the number zero, and 10 pulses to signal the number nine. New Zealand uses ten pulses minus the number desired; so dialling 7 produces three pulses. In Norway, the North American system with the number '1' corresponding to one pulse was used, except for the capital, Oslo, which used the same "inverse" system as in New Zealand.

For this reason, the numbers on the dial are shifted in different countries, or even in different areas of one country, to work with their system because of the difference of the number arrangement on the dial. The dial numbering can occur in four different formats, with 0 adjacent either to the 1 or the 9, and the numbers running in ascending or descending order, with either the 0, 1 or 9 being closest to the finger stop.

Rotary dial telephones have no redial feature; the complete number has to be dialed for every attempted call.

Since the late 1940s, telephones were redesigned with the numbers and letters on a ring outside the finger wheel to provide better visibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_dial#cite_note-11 [11]

Emergency calling

A relic of these differences is found in emergency telephone numbers used in various countries; the United Kingdom selected 999 due to the ease of converting call office dials to make free calls. "0" for the Operator was already free, and the cam that removed the shunt on the line when the dial was rotated to the "0" position could be altered to include the adjacent digit "9" (and "8" if required) so that calls to "0" and "999" could be made without inserting coins. In New Zealand 111 was selected for the same reason: on New Zealand reverse-numbered dials each digit "1" sends 9 pulses to the central office/telephone exchange (like "9" in Britain).

In some offices in Australia, rotary dial phones were provided without the dial so that calls could be received but could not supposedly be made (can’t trust some staff not to abuse the system). I can recall making calls on at least one of these telephones by lifting the receiver and carefully pressing and releasing the button/bar under the cradle (used to end a call) the respective number of times to represent the number desired (e.g. 6 times for a 6) with a suitable pause between each digit, thus simulating the pulses that would have been generated had a dial been available. With a little practice, this became quite simple.

Regards

Steve

From:TramsDownUnder@... [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, 16 December, 2017 8:51 PM
To:TramsDownUnder@...
Subject: RE: [TramsDownUnder] Re: One pint milk bottle

Noel Reed wrote:

> In New Zealand, the numbers on the telephone dials were the reverse of the Australian arrangement. WHY ! !


Because New Zealand had the same dial as the UK, if I remember rightly. It is a long time since I saw a dial phone. Decades. So maybe it was the reverse of the UK dial too, but I don't think I ever saw a dial phone on any visit to the UK.

The NZ emergency number is 111, which was either the first or last number on the old dial. Corresponding with the 999 in the UK and the 000 in Australia.

--
david mcloughlin, Wellington no more
"Holy writ requires unholy scrutiny."