Montana's Ham Radio Forum

Who can give us a history of the telephone exchange names, i.e. when did they come into existence and why? And when did they fall by the wayside? Give us the details!

bump

Since nobody seems interested in this bit of trivia, I'll answer it.

A 7-digit telephone number has two parts: the first three digits identify the telephone exchange. The last four digits identify the specific telephone within that exchange. Long time residents of Great Falls might recognize that a local telephone number with a "731" prefix is probably located somewhere on Malmstrom AFB.

In the early days of telephones, you picked up your telephone and asked the operator to connect you. By the 1920's AT&T ("Ma Bell" to us oldtimers) started installing automatic dialing equipment that allowed a person to place their own telephone call by "direct dialing" the desired telephone number. A 7-digit format was chosen to allow for slightly more than 5-million possible combinations of telephone exchange and specific telephone number. At that time, 5-million possible telephone numbers seemed to enough to last for a hundred years...

Strangely, the telephone company thought it would be too difficult for people to remember a 7-digit telephone number. So they used letters for the first two digits of the exchange. Often times the letters represented the location of the telephone exchange, such as BR 3-2853 for Brooklyn, or ELm 2-7746 for an exchange on Elm Street. Otherwise the names and letters were picked simply because they would be easy to remember. The rotary dial telephones were marked with both numbers and letters to help folks when dialing telephone numbers. Eventually, all the logical names were used, forcing a switch to just using all numbers. Automatic dialing started in 1958. The conversion to 7-digit numbers without letters started in the mid-1960's.

An interesting history of telephone exchange names can be found at:

http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHis ... mbers.html

And as a bonus, when I was a little boy I remember our telephone exchange name was "ELgin", which turns out to be a city in Illinois. I grew up in upstate New York, so the ELgin prefix had no local meaning. I also remember that it seemed as if you could have any color telephone you wanted, as long as it was black. Actually, your only choice was whether you wanted a wall-mount telephone or a desk top model. Most homes usually had a black wall-mount telephone located in the kitchen. The busy moms insisted on having really long handset cords that looped all the way down to the floor and back up again. Even though mom was on the phone, there was almost no place in the house she could not reach with that long handset cord and a large wooden soup spoon...

Great explanation Bruce, you bring up some painful memories though.....
Well anyway since you answered this question guess what? Yeah you guessed it, you get to ask the next trivia question. Tag you're it!!!