[SOC] The Numbers

[CHRISTOPHER REDDING]

Perhaps I am wrong, but somebody much older once told me that 'the numbers' are a throwback to when the postal service used morse to send telegrams between post offices for delivery.  I believe that there once existed a standard set of these abbreviations, to avoid the operators having to send common greetings over and over again longhand.

I remember reading many years ago that during WW1, there was a code that was dreaded...from memory it was something like R2i [number].  This meant 'change of traffic...get the other pad out', the following [number] of telegrams are all: 'Regret to inform you that [insert number, rank and name] has been reported [insert killed/missing] etc.

The operator would then just copy down a long vertical list of numbers, ranks, names, dates, and then later fill in 'those' telegrams, adding the standard words that are not in brackets himself.  Whole streets would then freeze at the sight of the telegram boy on his bicycle, to see which door he stopped at, and.

It's funny how these things carry over through time.  My son thinks that the abbreviations he uses when he texts friends on his cellphone are all very modern and clever, but they are nearly all 'telegraphese'.

By the way, I fancy one of those Ameco AM-K4 keys to go on a nice bit of manogany that I have here.  But I can't find a UK stockist, only Morsex 'over there'.  If I first make an unsolicited gift of 25 bucks plus all postage to one of you, could someone make an unsolicited gift of the key to me???

Toodle-Pip
Chris the Wafflemeister UK