ATE

I haven’t yet figured out what this stylish monogram stands for on an older access cover I came across the other day.

The A is almost certainly Auckland. The T is probably Telephone but could be Telegraph. What little history I’ve found so far tells me the telegraph service was a thing long after the actual telegraph had fallen out of use. And the E is probably Electric.

I haven’t tried hard yet, but trying to do this lookup seems like a rare Google failure. Typing in Auckland Telephone and Electric, even in quotes, ONLY returns some current business listings. I have to believe that phrase exists elsewhere on the Internet. I presume Google is trying to help by only showing me what it thinks I want. I also presume I’ll get better results from a desktop browser, but I haven’t gone upstairs to check.

Maybe I can send Alphabet a message in Morse code (which was still possible in some parts of NZ into the 1990s) to to loosen up the mobile filters a little bit.