41–50 of 145 posts
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Fun fact: you can still call Pennsylvania 6-5000 and get the hotel which has closed in the last few years. They used to play The Glenn Miller song when you called them...
Maybe not anymore. The building is being demolished. https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/last-remnants-hotel-pennsy...
It's so annoying that they only used one example (Murray Hill) which is actually MU and not MH, which required me to re-skim it a few times to grok what was going on. It would have been nice for the article to provide several examples of the mnemonic. While I've been aware for quite a few years that the telephone system used to use names for exchanges (eg, Pennsylvania 6-500), it took a few MORE years for me to reali…
The article linked to the full Ma Bell list: https://web.archive.org/web/20150317062651/http://www.ourweb... It's strange to me that there are 5-6 options for each exchange, instead of a canonical name.
> It's strange to me that there are 5-6 options for each exchange, instead of a canonical name.
The point isn't to assign them canonical names, but to define a mapping from the two letters at the start of a word to two-digit codes. These letter-pairs are chosen so that meaningful words can be formed with them (that's why there is no QX, because no English word starts with QX) and that they are distinguishable (which is why there is a BA but not BE, BO, or BU: it would be hard to distinguish BAldwin from BEldwing, BOldwin or BUldwin).
There isn't a single canonical name because the purpose of the code is to allow cities to define their own area codes with memorable names that vary based on the location. One city might use UNiversity (86), MUseum (68) and CEnter (23).
But using UNiversity or MUseum wouldn't make sense in a different city that doesn't have a local university or a particularly notable museum. But they can still use the same area codes with the mnemonics TOwn Square instead of UNiversity (86), OVerlook instead of MUseum (68), or CEdar Avenue instead of CEnter (23).
People are mentioning this was on the Simpsons, but I remember my mom telling me this was how they used to name phone numbers when she was a kid and she wasn't even born until 1961. Lester Freeman in The Wire from 2003ish was still calling the prefix of a phone number the "exchange," even when talking about cellular service.
I have never understood how that worked despite my father working for the phone company. Dad explained a lot of things, but that wasn't one of them.
They even had this in the Simpsons in the 90s, so not even 50s era! Mr Plow gives his phone number as Klondike 5 3226 and the jingle says "KL5 3226"
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Pretty sure Seinfeld gave a KL5 number once too.
Yea, Seinfeld phone numbers were all over the place. Letters in the numbers, 5 digits numbers and then towards the end the standard 7 digit and 10 digit. I didn’t watch it contemporaneously, but rather pretty recently and I kept thinking, there’s no way the show is that old that they were still using letters in phone numbers in NYC.
It's worth noting that during the run of Seinfeld the number of telephone numbers was growing rapidly. Until dial-up internet took off it was pretty uncommon for a house to have 2 numbers - usually just well off people or those who ran businesses out of their homes. Then dial-up internet happened and phone rates were also getting cheaper, so a lot of families opted for a second line in their home to not tie up the primary phone for hours on end. At the same time beepers, then cell phones went from something for doctors (and other important people) and drug dealers to "pretty common", adding to the growth rate of assigned telephone numbers.
Put another way - during the run of Seinfeld my grandmother lived in the same house and had the same 7digit phone number that she had since the 1940s, but got 2 new area codes (708 split into 847, 630 and 708 in ~1995), and 10 digit dialing was required not long after. All the rapid (compared to decades of sameness prior) change is what finally broke the old habits, more than silly things like touch tone dialing or direct dial long distance.
They even had this in the Simpsons in the 90s, so not even 50s era! Mr Plow gives his phone number as Klondike 5 3226 and the jingle says "KL5 3226"
using my landline, i generally just give people my last 6 digits - one of the reasons i like using landlines for local calls, actually
You must live in a very remote area to still support that. Not to mention to still have a landline, no one I know in my area will even give out a POTS line, you can only get VOIP and most households don’t have that anymore either, aside from the outrageous cost all the providers charge for a single line, there’s so many taxes and fees you end up paying close to 100% more. (E.g $40/m for the line ends up being $80). M…
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You must live in a very remote area to still support that. Not to mention to still have a landline, no one I know in my area will even give out a POTS line, you can only get VOIP and most households don’t have that anymore either, aside from the outrageous cost all the providers charge for a single line, there’s so many taxes and fees you end up paying close to 100% more. (E.g $40/m for the line ends up being $80). M…
Parent might be British - POTS is still widely available here, although not terribly popular. It's about as expensive to get a POTS line as three unlimited-calls 4G SIM cards, unless you combine calls with your broadband and can save money on the line rental.
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Parent might be British - POTS is still widely available here, although not terribly popular. It's about as expensive to get a POTS line as three unlimited-calls 4G SIM cards, unless you combine calls with your broadband and can save money on the line rental.
i use voip - it is cheap, sky, uk.
I could be wrong but I think there was a period after the exchanges were used (no need to use full names) and folks continued using 2 letters as a prefix to a number because they were easier to remember that way (can still remember my cousin's 70s number to this day PL78750). You would look at the phone to determine the number for P and L.