From D. C. W. Pope
Boncath, Dyfed
If Charles Pochin would look at an old-fashioned telephone dial that displays
letters and numbers, he would see that “O” and “0” occupy the same position
(Letters, 2 March, p 50, and 13 April, p 50).
Long before push-buttons and mysterious “hash” symbols, we were instructed to
“dial `O’ for operator”. Millions of people continue quite correctly to
pronounce the “O” as a letter, because that is what it was.
