Take a look at the pictures and stories that have been submitted so far.
Would you like to contribute on some aspect of communications history? If so, share your memories by submitting your contribution to the People's Connected Earth collection.
The most recent contributions are located at the top.
The UXD5 exchange at Glenkindie (Scotland) was the first Digital telephone exchange in the UK.
I worked for BT (GPO / PO) from January 1967 to July 1992 and my first job was in Telephone Billing; initially in Manchester and then in the London area. In the early 70s I was a telephone billing instructor at the ...
My mother’s name was Stella Zara during the war. She was 20 when war broke out. After working for Shell and London Transport where she would see bombed bus wrecks towed into the depot, she got a job as Female ...
It was interesting to read the story about the history of the 999 service. When I was an engineering apprentice, I was told that 111 would be quick to dial (on the old rotary dials) but it was not used as the emergency ...
It must have been around 1975 - I was about 12 years old - when I was the cause of a very bizarre accident.
I was out early one evening with some friends who had gone into a local convenience store. I waited ...
My name is Florence May Sharp nee Williams born 1934. I left school in July 1948 and as there were no vacancies at the Post Office I started work at a department store on the cosmetics counter. I had only worked there ...
After 37 years in the Post Office I still treasure this rather tattered picture of an event that was historic both to the Post Office and me.
The Telecom Tower in London, previously the Post Office Tower, is regarded as the hub of the BT microwave radio network, but the decision to build the tower was made some time after the Post Office started providing ...
The Post Office turned up to install our shared line when I was about 12 in 1965. My parents were out so all the key decisions were mine such as postioning the phone and choosing the colour. The 2-tone instrument gave ...
When I went travelling in my gap year - over a decade ago, the only way I could keep in touch with my friends and family at home was via very expensive, time-delayed public phones, or through letters delivered to post ...
Seven-year-old Kitty Attwell uses a Mickey Mouse phone to hear one of this year's Dial-a-Santa stories.
She met Santa in person during his stay at Selfridge's Christmas grotto.
Santa is letting children phone him ...
With the birth of our twins Hannah and Rebecca, life became a little more hectic and tiring. We love them to bits but they leave no time for anything else. So it was a godsend to discover that by using BT Broadband and ...
I joined BT in 1976 as an apprentice. It has dramatically changed my life.
Who would have thought a Telephone Engineer Apprentice (with just O and A levels) would one day become the Solution Design Authority for BT's ...
Ann leads numbers-only phone drive
The Post Office has launched ANN, All-figure Numbering NOW, to persuade people to forget the old letter-code phone numbers and start using numbers only.
When I first joined BT, the nearby Pershore telephone exchange was still manual (CBS2) - the very last of its kind in the West Midlands area. In 1967 the exchange was made automatic using the latest Strowger ...
When I was a child my mother used to talk about her grandfather, who had worked on some sort of telecommunications on Rathlin Island. She actually used the word 'telephonics'. Until I started to work on my family tree ...
You need hands - for writing, searching through files and typing. That's why engineer Mr Leslie Sutton has invented this cheap, simple handset holder that enables people to talk on the phone and have both hands free.
I joined BT in 1966 as an engineering apprentice based in Evesham in Worcestershire. Evesham was the second telephone exchange in the country after Bristol to have STD, which meant that subscribers could dial ...
Jane Cain, the voice of the speaking clock, remembers making the first recordings:
The actual recording wasn't nearly as strenous as most people seem to think... The real work was done by the engineers of the Post ...
The 5,000,000th telephone was officially opened on 7 September 1949.
Mr H M Hawkins of Wildage Farm, Stelling Minnis, near Canterbury applied for a telephone in March 1946. However there was a long delay to his ...
In 1960s more and more people in this country were able to dial the Continent and needed to time those more costly long-distance calls.
This Swiss gadget fitted onto the dial of a telephone and showed the time of ...
When I was 13 (I'm now 28), we only had one telephone in the house- which was kept in the hall. On a school trip, I met a boy called Alex who lived in Staffordshire. And in order to make sure that I wasn't overheard ...
We're reliant on the fact that most people, if not all people have a telephone. People need an immediate response. Without it, no Samaritans couldn't exist without the phone.
An explaination of how Alf Sawkins used a telephone for the first time with a group of friends to confirm a booking for his local football team, with disastrous results.