No idea! I’m old enough to have had rotary phones at home, but none of them had letters; only numbers.
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Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@rsms, I grew up with rotary phones, but never saw one with letters. Possibly pulse phones had them, but not with the C like that. -
The left phone in your photo also only has some letters of the alphabet. Makes me wonder if maybe the letters there had a domain-specific use, like a company directory or short-code...
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Fun fact about rotary phones. The signaling is done by "hanging up" N times in quick succession. Hang up 3 times for 3, 6 times for 6 etc. In Europe, it was hang up once for 0, twice for 1, etc. Which is why the 0 is before the 1 on a European phone, but after 9 on an American
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And apparently in New Zealand and parts of (!) Norway, the order was reversed, 1 hangup for 9, 2 for 8 etc. So the numbers were in reverse order on their phones. Cool thing is you could still take a phone anywhere and just put stickers on it!
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Also, the picture on the right is of a Norwegian or Danish phone. They have Æ, Ø, Å. Swedish has Å, Ä, Ö
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Interesting – either it was mislabeled as Swedish, or I read the wrong label!
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I was curious so looked for more images and found this one, seems C = “Central”pic.twitter.com/tXHKiN0dn6
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Oh, fantastic. I wonder how it relates to HELP on the other digit!
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“KTAS” definitely makes it Danish; it was the Copenhagen telephone company (“Kjøbenhavns Telefon Aktieselskab”) back in the day. You can buy a KTAS D30 phone on Danish eBay for $90 (yikes!) if you want: https://www.dba.dk/telefon-ktas-fra-1930/id-1051916745/ …
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I think I know: You initiated the phone call by spelling the two-letter code for the recipient’s phone central (e.g. “GE” for the town of Gentofte), so I think “C” was reserved as shorthand for your own local central. Try Google Translate on this: https://www.mobilsiden.dk/nyheder/hvorfor-var-der-bogstaver-pa-drejetelefonen,lid.7851/ …
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