Early phone numbers

[Moses Yoder]

I found a nice wooden triangular rule today for 50 cents, picked it up. It advertises the Barber-Greene coal handling equipment. Barber-Green was started in 1917 I think and eventually became known for their asphalt paving equipment. I thought the phone number was a little weird, it states "Phone State 5923." I thought this was a 4 digit number and began researching the time when a 4 digit number would have been used and found an interesting tidbit of info I had never heard before.

Phone numbers originally had only one digit, then 2, 3 and so forth as needed. When they realized that 4 digit numbers were not going to be enough they decided to go with 3 letters and 4 numbers, I think this is when letters were added to the dial pad. In order to make the 3 letters easy to remember they assigned a word to it that had those letters as the first three. For example a phone number would be advertised as "Harrison 9676". To dial it you would dial HAR-9676. I am not sure when this started but it was prior to 1930 and ended by 1947. (TELEPHONE NUMBERS) The telephone number on my rule is "State 5923", or STA-5923. Probably from sometime in the '20s. Of course none of this is researched in depth, it is just my best guess from the info I found.

rule full.jpgRule phone.jpg

[Howard Garner]

Early 50's we were on a party line with operators. Our number was 10F12. 10F was the plug location in the central office the 12 was 1 long and 2 shorts.
Then they switched us to the 7 "digits" in our case NIagra5-####. My brother still has that number at the same location after all these years.

[Michael Weber]

I understand the theory at the time was that people wouldn't be able to remember more than 5 numbers so they used the leading words (mine was SUnset) as an easier to remember option. So SUnset 22292 instead of 7822292

[Bruce Page]

We were EMpire 24834. That was a long time ago!

[John McClanahan]

In the early '80's I worked for a company located near a small town. The entire town had the same exchange (first 3 digits), so you only needed to dial 4 digits to make a local call.


John

[David Weaver]

About the same time, I was living in a small town (early 1980s) and if you dialed 4 numbers, it just kept in the local exchange. It was a big deal when they had to get a second exchange. Now, they must have at least 5 local exchanges in the same town.

[Myk Rian]

Growing up we had a PArkway number.
In the early 60s you could dial a 3 digit number that wasn't an area code, and be connected to an open line.
We used to get a bunch of kids on after school.

[Mel Fulks]

I worked in an old building a few miles down the road that had the original business name and phone number painted nearly billboard size on it . It was 28 or 29.....technology must have been moving pretty slowly to invest in that. While I was working there it was repainted in a preservation effort. But we saw no increase in business even though the new company used the old name!

[Bill Huber]

Phone numbers have sure changed. As a kid if I was at a friend's house I picked up the phone, turned the crank and told the operator I wanted the Hubers, to call home.
Then things got harder as the area got bigger, I then would have to turn the crank and ask to be connected to 976w2.
But now things have gone back, I take the phone out of my pocket press a button and say call home.
Life is good;-)

[Jim Koepke]

The changes took place at different times in different areas.

Where I grew up went from one Central office to three. My recollection is there were only two or three exchanges at the time BEacon 2, 3 & maybe 4.

Our number changed when the first new one (CApitol 3) opened in the late 1950s. A small town/city to the north of us also went to dial service at that time.

I was working with the phone company when the last one opened in the remote part of the area. That was in the late 1960s. They went from a live operator to dial phones. All the old phones had to be taken out and exchanged for new phones.

This was in the San Francisco bay area.

jtk

[Lee Schierer]

I am not sure when this started but it was prior to 1930 and ended by 1947. (TELEPHONE NUMBERS) The telephone number on my rule is "State 5923", or STA-5923. Probably from sometime in the '20s. Of course none of this is researched in depth, it is just my best guess from the info I found.

I was born in 1949 and when I was in first and second grade our phone number was WAL 3452, so there were still locations using the letters as late as 1956-57

[Jerome Stanek]

when I was first married in 1971 ours was Hunter 3 4317 or HU3 4317

[Curt Harms]

The first phone # I can remember was DIamond(34)8-83??. This had to be early '60s.

[Jim Rimmer]

Pre-dial phones our number was 5359J. Dial phones, it became ALpine 5-4486. After I moved away, that exchange became 255 (same keys on dial or touch pad but no letters).

[Jim Laumann]

As a kid, our number was HAmilton 5-2040. This when on to the mid-60's in my area (central MN). Area codes were just starting to come in to play about that time.

Where we live now, you can still make a local call using 5 digits....