71–80 of 145 posts
Well that's one mystery solved: https://youtu.be/QacpBRPonzM?si=7kFqTOe9S9F0OORy I never knew why Homer gave the fictional number 'KL5-3226' ("Klondike-five") for his Mr. Plow commercial.
I knew the guy who had 1-800-FUCK-YOU, and he used it to sell those classic bumper stickers: "How's my driving? Call 1-800-FUCK-YOU!"
There were asmall limited number of wires going over the hill to town, if you dialed "222222222222222222222222222222" ......
I vaguely recall there was a Twilight Zone episode that might have used “Klondike” - anybody happen to know which one? I think they picked up the phone, the operator was either already on the line, or they might’ve dialed zero, then requested the number they wanted to call. I just remember it wasn’t completely numeric. I always had wondered what was going on with that phone number, and I think these comments have pre…
I vaguely recall there was a Twilight Zone episode that might have used “Klondike” - anybody happen to know which one? I think they picked up the phone, the operator was either already on the line, or they might’ve dialed zero, then requested the number they wanted to call. I just remember it wasn’t completely numeric. I always had wondered what was going on with that phone number, and I think these comments have pre…
Klondike 5 - ... Would mean a 555 number which is the example.com of exchange numbers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I was a kid when Seinfeld aired originally and didn't find it that weird. My grandmother would often give her phone number to older people as SHerman-2xxxx. She stopped doing that after Chicago and the suburbs split 312 and the suburbs became 708 in ~1990. I can see it still being common among older people in the 90s in Manhattan until more area codes were added towards the end of the decade (there was also some rest…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The article did a really poor job of explaining the logic. > 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 wor…
This 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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was a kid when Seinfeld aired originally and didn't find it that weird. My grandmother would often give her phone number to older people as SHerman-2xxxx. She stopped doing that after Chicago and the suburbs split 312 and the suburbs became 708 in ~1990. I can see it still being common among older people in the 90s in Manhattan until more area codes were added towards the end of the decade (there was also some rest…
I liked this video I recent watched, which covered the history of this, centered on Seinfeld: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viLVO46FQX0
The exchange prefix once mapped to a single physical central office location. It wasn't until the 1980s that there was much lookup involved in local calls. In telephony, converting phone numbers to routes is called "translation". Before cheap memory, translation was really hard. In "A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System: Electronics Technology", there are descriptions of various special purpose device…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gsx2ZsYggGw&t=956s&pp=ygUSY29u...
The all mechanical switches are flat out amazing, and quite performant, given the tech. Often, it was less than a second from off hook to dial tone! The video I linked has some great detail.
And they did not have amplifiers! One implication was surprising! Say you made a machine to generate dialtone. Great. It could service X number of subscribers based on its capability and Ohm's law.
Want or need more? Get more or bigger machines. It is crazy!
Another implication was each circuit needed to be ideal in order to carry voice. No amps meant a closed DC loop with the mic able to modulate voice via resistance. This is part of why the telcos resisted any attempt to connect to their network. It was easy to load it all down which required a service call
Anyhow, I was quite surprised to learn how telephony worked and have appreciation and respect for the engineers and their work connecting the nation.
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.