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Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

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Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#81

Post by bambax »

The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics?

In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities.

So your number would be "Trocadéro-12-45" or "Lourmel-78-98" for instance; and, starting in 1928, you could dial it in directly on your phone without speaking to an operator, by using the first three letters of the indicatif (TRO or LOU in those cases).

This system was replaced in 1963, but the new numbers simply reused the numbers that were represented by the names. Because of this, many people still told and wrote their numbers using the old names (that still worked), well into the 70s. I'm old enough to remember people telling me their numbers using the indicatif.

More information (in French): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anciens_indicatifs_t%C3%A9l%C3...

Edit: Another fun fact: numbers followed the order they were attributed, so if your number was Tours-00-01 it meant you were the first one to have a phone number in that town.

This being France, getting the telephone was a complex bureaucratic affair and many times you had to prove you really needed one, because they were in short supply.

My grandmother was extremely proud that her father had a very low number (some time in the 1920s probably?) because he was captain of the firefighters and needed to be reachable at all times. It was a story she told often.

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#82

Post by unethical_ban »

dogleash wrote: post #44
dools wrote: post #3

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"

Mr Burns answers the phone "Ahoy-hoy" because Alexander Graham Bell proposed that as the greeting for answering.

No fucking way! Wow.

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#83

Post by pavlov »

bambax wrote: post #81

The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics? In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities. So your number would be "Trocadéro-12-45" or "Lourmel-78-98" for instance; and, starting in 1928, you could dial it in directly on your phone w…

> “My grandmother was extremely proud that her father had a very low number”

In Finland, a local operator built the world’s first commercial GSM network back in 1991. They initially sold four-digit phone numbers as a perk. (Combined with the country code and the operator code, the numbers today look like this: +358 50 1234)

Those short numbers are still being resold by their owners. I’ve heard some of them go for tens of thousands of euros.

The psychology of valuable numbers is pretty interesting. NFTs are basically that. You don’t even own the JPEG, you just own a number in a database that indicates that image. And if your ugly ape picture number is 24 and some poor sap has ugly ape picture number 1581, surely that makes you richer and more envied.

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#84

Post by bambax »

pavlov wrote: post #83
bambax wrote: post #81

The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics? In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities. So your number would be "Trocadéro-12-45" or "Lourmel-78-98" for instance; and, starting in 1928, you could dial it in directly on your phone w…

> “My grandmother was extremely proud that her father had a very low number” In Finland, a local operator built the world’s first commercial GSM network back in 1991. They initially sold four-digit phone numbers as a perk. (Combined with the country code and the operator code, the numbers today look like this: +358 50 1234) Those short numbers are still being resold by their owners. I’ve heard some of them go for ten…

We're not immune to this. Internet points or "karma" on this very website work the same way.

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#85

Post by Symbiote »

zw123456 wrote: post #63

One other fun fact about numbering, the most frequently dialed exchanges, those for big cities would use the lowest numbers, e.g. downtown would be 223 for the exchange and big cities area codes 212 and so on. The reason was not for the convenience of the dialer, remember it was rotary dial way back when a lot of those first got assigned, it was because the signaling was in band so the longer it took for the dialing…

That also explains why European emergency numbers are often 11X, including 112 which is the universal emergency number in the EU and the GSM standard (so it will work on your mobile phone too).

It doesn't explain Britain using 999 or Australia using 000.

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#86

Post by Symbiote »

nerdbert wrote: post #53
evilbob93 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Born in 1961 and these articles don't touch on one thing that I remember when I was a kid: you only needed 5 numbers to dial if you were calling someone else in the same thing. This was the case at my grandparents in Bay City, Michigan in the late 1960s. My cousin's number was LIncoln 2-9729 I have never understood how that worked despite my father working for the phone company. Dad explained a lot of things, but tha…

There was a timeout. If you had touch tone it was faster to dial the whole thing because then the call would connect straight away.

Interesting.

In the European countries in familiar with, there would be a prefix digit (usually 0) to show a call was not local. (And a different prefix to make an international call, usually 00.)

So if you live in London and have a landline phone, you can call Westminster Council by dialing 7641 6000. Outside London you'd need to dial 020 7641 6000.

The 0 isn't really part of the number, so from abroad you typically dial 0044 20 7641 6000 (but the international prefix varies, so it's written +44 20 7641 6000.)

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#87

Post by pavlov »

bambax wrote: post #84
pavlov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “My grandmother was extremely proud that her father had a very low number” In Finland, a local operator built the world’s first commercial GSM network back in 1991. They initially sold four-digit phone numbers as a perk. (Combined with the country code and the operator code, the numbers today look like this: +358 50 1234) Those short numbers are still being resold by their owners. I’ve heard some of them go for ten…

We're not immune to this. Internet points or "karma" on this very website work the same way.

Absolutely. But the coveted big number, an ever-accumulating ledger balance, is a different kind of valuable number than the small number, which generally represents a distance to the origin of the number cult. Lower is better because it’s closer to the source.

Elon Musk has the biggest big numbers of them all. But that doesn’t mean he could acquire every kind of valuable small number that exists. He can definitely buy a low-numbered NFT, and he can probably buy an early Picasso (though there aren’t many not in museums). But he can’t buy himself a low Erdős number for example.

This is what traditionally separates the nouveaux riches from old money: the first are interested in the big numbers, the latter in the small ones. (“My great great grandfather was the second Earl of Somethingdom.”)

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#88

Post by toast0 »

bambax wrote: post #81

The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics? In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities. So your number would be "Trocadéro-12-45" or "Lourmel-78-98" for instance; and, starting in 1928, you could dial it in directly on your phone w…

> The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics?

> In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities.

Named exchanges are before my time, but my understanding is that the names were kind of sort of arbitrary; they'd try to assign the exchanges meaningful names, but that's not always possible, especially when trying to also balance other numbering priorities. In the 1950s, AT&T put together a list of recommended names for exchanges, you can see on wikipedia [1],

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names#Stand...

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#89

Post by kalleboo »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #28
vxNsr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't POTS being shut down in the UK in 2 years from now? https://www.ebcgroup.co.uk/news-insights/all-of-your-questio...

Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)

#90

Post by toast0 »

jmull wrote: post #12

My mother explained this to me (in the '70s or '80s) when I was complaining about them changing or phone number... they took the first three digits of our seven digit number for something. Her number used to be "Tuxedo" (TX) something, something, something. I don't know if she joined the "Anti-Digit Dialing League" that the article mentions, but I could tell she liked she old number. Her point was that they'd changed…

There's plans for eventual expansion, [1], although I wouldn't bet on any of the current plans to be the one that's eventually chosen. Current growth levels seem to give us capacity until beyond 2050. [2]

Number expansion does regularly happen around the world; it's not fun, but it's part of life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan_...

[2] https://www.nationalnanpa.com/reports/October_2020_NANP_Exha...

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