Bullshit. It was outdated by the time the first prototypes were tested. And when they switch the mechanical off and turned on the all electronic system X it kept crashing and crashing all because the software was buggy and couldn't handle not registered numbers. System X should've been put into service in the early 70s, then it could've had any chance to compete. Instead, companies like NEC dominated the phone switching markets for years.

+BBC600 Well it kind of was for 20 years from when that video was made. I think that's justifiable personally.

When I was a kid in the 70s, I built a crude telephone system for my house, with simple star services that linked to a car radio tuned to Radio 2, and naughtily, would pick up calls from the BT line if it was ringing. We lived in 51 so in reverence also, I called it System 51.

Depends on what you mean by digital. Digitally controlled or digitally switched? The first digital controlled exchange was the mid 1950's Highgate Wood, which was a multi-million pound disaster. The first digitally controlled exchanges were the American 1ESS system which goes back to the 1960's. British Telecom remained so far behind in technology due to the Highgate Wood disaster they were considered as a joke by other telcos.

@@keithammleter3824 How did BT hurt you? 🙈

@@fredturpentine6651 : They didn't. But they sure provided a lot of entertainment over the years with their technological miss-steps.

@@keithammleter3824 It seems you have a massive chip on your shoulder for some reason 🤣

@@fredturpentine6651 No chip, just a knowledge of the facts. Before WW2 Britain was exporting telephone exchange equipment, or licensing local manufacture, to all British Commonwealth countries and more. After WW2 Britain progressively lost all its export markets, because other countries had by then developed superior products, eg LM Ericsson's crossbar. When in 1959 Australia decided to stop buying British equipment, and start buying Swedish Ericsson (as it had much lower maintenance costs, lower purchase costs, and had flexible call routing), the British Government panicked, and sent a high level delegation to Canberra to sort those "colonials" out and make them buy British. They got laughed at and sent packing. That's a fact - you can look it up. The first British electronic exchange, Highgate Wood, built as part of a very large and expensive project led by the BPO and involving all major British telecomms manufacturers, was a complete failure right from switch-on, and was scrapped. That's a fact - you can look it up. System X did at least work just fine, but it didn't measure up against its competitors. It won no export orders, except for the odd small exchange installed in a couple of island communities who got it free as part of a grant. That's a fact - you can look it up. And British Telecom ended up buying Ericsson - that's a fact too.

Might be a bit of a late answer but Yes It's still widely used.

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Oh! Over here in Canada we call it the pound key I bet people might be looking for a £ sign if you called it that!

@@BBC600 hash

As I understand, System X was way more advanced than competing systems. The problem was more down to the fact it was designed by committee and way over-engineered, making it very expensive to buy and to maintain, in the face of established and proven systems such as the Axe 10 (System Y) and the 5ESS

​@@BlueTangWebSystems : System X was first shown in 1979. It came later than AXE-10 (1974) but earlier than 5ESS (1982). One might thus expect System X to be more sophisticated than AXE-10, but this is NOT the case. I don't personally have any experience with 5ESS, so I can't be certain, but I would be very surprised If it wasn't superior in features and performance to System X. The BPO always had fairly primitive concepts of routing for example, but the Bell System was always the most sophisticated wrt routing. There are some factors that complicate the picture, and makes your view dependent on just what you mean by "advanced". Firstly, there is no single AXE-10 or System X. Both systems evolved substantially over the years and new technology (eg advanced silicon) and new market needs (eg VOIP, cell phones 1G, 2G, 4G, 5G) arose. A new AXE-10 exchange today would be, apart from the overarching architecture concepts of APZ and APT, unrecognisable to anyone trained on the first release. AXE-10 and System X are prone to system-wide outages. The architecture of 5ESS makes outages extremely unlikely. A large bomb is about the only way to kill a 5ESS site. Is this feature an "advance" or just good design? Electromechanical exchanges always had this feature, but it sort of got lost in the transition to digital control outside of the USA.

@@keithammleter3824 🤡