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.
Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
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Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#12My 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 the system before and surely keep changing the system (indeed, some years later they changed our area code).
I wonder what the next change will be?
EDIT: searched... Tuxedo was actually TUxedo, or 88. Also: nemonics can really work. It's weird I can remember the first two digits of a phone number I head about once, that had stopped existing before I was born.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#13using my landline, i generally just give people my last 6 digits - one of the reasons i like using landlines for local calls, actually
Most major metro areas in the US no longer support seven digit dialing.
And I love how they call it "10-digit calling" even though it generally requires 11 digits (or 11 button presses on cell).
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#14This article, and Wikipedia, and apparently everyone else, all cite the same 2001 nytimes article regarding the Committee of Ten Million to Oppose All-Number Calling. How influential were they, really, if that is the only remnant of their existence?
Here’s a New Yorker piece from 1962 mentioning them, at least:
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#15They 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"
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.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#16using my landline, i generally just give people my last 6 digits - one of the reasons i like using landlines for local calls, actually
Most major metro areas in the US no longer support seven digit dialing.
Sometimes it’s just implied. At the pizza place where our cabin is (ok, it’s like a 25 minutes drive), you can just give them your last 4 numbers and they assume the rest.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most major metro areas in the US no longer support seven digit dialing.
And I love how they call it "10-digit calling" even though it generally requires 11 digits (or 11 button presses on cell).
Huh? You don’t if it’s a “local” call. Probably more of a US thing where mobile phone long-distance charges went the way of the dodo a long time ago. But they’re still very much a thing in Canada and just starting to die off.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#18using 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).
Most families that have young kids who are old enough to place calls but not have a cellphone appear to just some form of internet VOIP like ooma.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most major metro areas in the US no longer support seven digit dialing.
And I love how they call it "10-digit calling" even though it generally requires 11 digits (or 11 button presses on cell).
I'm not sure I follow. Obviously cell phones and cordless phones have a talk button, but that's not very digitlike. When I operate a landline, I just enter ten digits: 9095551212. Are you implying a leading 1 would be necessary? IME, it isn't for local 'ten digit dialing'.
Re: Why did old phone numbers start with letters? (2015)
#20It'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…
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...