NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2020 Nov 8, 19:37 -0800
Edward J W wrote
As I recall, people got phone bills in the 1960s. How did that happen?
Getting way off topic so I expect this to be closed down soon ........
In NZ in the 1960/70s your bill was in two parts - a rental for "free" local calls and a list of toll calls generated from paper tickets created by the operator. I believe that in the UK local calls were paid for individually. The number of calls was recorded by a mechanical meter. But I could be wrong.
The point I am making is that there was no way to obtain from an electro-mechanical exchange a iist giving (for each local call) the number called, time of call, length of call. That was not possible until the stored program control (computer) exchanges of the 1980s. And of course in the mobile era the phone companies can track the suspect's phone as he moves to and from the crime scene.
David P - Tom Barnaby and his sidekick, to the best of my knowledge, never requested phone records.
