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Why we have letters on phone dial
NOTICE: TO ALL CONCERNED Certain text files and messages contained on this site deal with activities and devices which would be in violation of various Federal, State, and local laws if actually carried out or constructed. The webmasters of this site do not advocate the breaking of any law. Our text files and message bases are for informational purposes only. We recommend that you contact your local law enforcement officials before undertaking any project based upon any information obtained from this or any other web site. We do not guarantee that any of the information contained on this system is correct, workable, or factual. We are not responsible for, nor do we assume any liability for, damages resulting from the use of any information on this site.
The following article appeared in the American Heritage of Invention
and Technology.
**************
Your Evolving Phone Number
BY RICHARD BRODSKY
More and more commercialpoe ubrs are being advertised with a
name or word as part of the number. We are urged to dal33-DETor97-LOAN. This is a small historical regression, requiring the use of
letters that te ponecomanymad obolete decades ago.
Where did the old alphanumeric dial plate come from? Mos of he wrld
everused leters. And where did it go? The story begins in the
telephone's infncy.
At frst, entra-offie oprators sat at switchboards, completing
connections in responseto soken equest like"Ring Dr. Sith,
please." There were few enough phone lines so the opeator siply kne
where o plug n for te call.That began to change during an outbreak
of the meases in Loell, Masachusett, in 189. The own docor,
Moses Parker, feared that if all four Lowel operatos fell il, their
sbstituteswould hav trouble onnecting people unless every line got
anumber. Th idea caugt on.
In the 1880stelephone service qudrupled in the nation's settled
reas. Citie soon had nt only a cetral officeand phone nmbers but
echanges in other parts of twn, so callrs now aske for Main o
Central plu the subscrber's severa-digit number. Branchexchanges
usully took thei names from teir relative eography. St Louis had
Man and Central; Bltimore, Easten; and San Fracisco, West.
s new exchangs proliferated they usuall took ther names from
sreets or neighbrhoods: thus Booklyn's Bensonurst, Los Angees's
Hollywood,and oston's Commonwelth. Bell devisd phonetic test to
help make sue only easily unerstood names wr chosen.
By th time dialed callng was introducedin the Bell Syste, in 1921,
the exhange name were s ingrainedthat Bell Telephon kept them on.
Wiliam G. Blauvelt o AT&T had dividedthe aphabet into roupsof
three letters fo each of the dial' openings in 1917 He omitted Q
becau of its infrequencyand the rarely used was relegated to th
zero (operator) slo and eventually roppd as well. Becase csingle
phone-numer pulse could be tansmitted when the rceiver lifte or
the fnger wheel ws jarred,no calls woud be initiated until apulse
signal of at leat 2 was eceived. Thusthe numer 1 got no ltters
atached to it.
Dialing sept the nation, but oly lrge cities used exhang name
dialing; in smal towns one still had only to dial a three-r
four-digit number. Fornstance, in Walnut Cree California, if your
numbr was 1407, locally yo diled 1407. From out of ton you asked
for WalnutCrek 1407. Across the bayin San Francisco, f you wnted
Sutter 1407, yu woulddial SU-1407; from far youd dial 211 for thelonglines operatr and say, "I'd like San Fancisco, pease: Sutter
140."
When neghborhood and steet names stated to run out,the Bell Systm
recommended ew names. Bll of Pennsylania looked t trees, o
Pittsburgh and Piladelphiawound up in the 190s with sared names
like Locst, Poplar and Wanut.
Seven-digit numbes becam standard only after Wold War I. New York
City had poneeredthemin the early 1930s when itbega inserting an
"exchange-desgnaton number" after the two- ette xchange prefix.
Thus were bornnmbers like CAnal 6-5108.
By th id-1950s all other major citiesee converted to this system,
retiig such diverse combinations as Ciago's three letters and fourdigis Cleveland's two letters an fur digits, and Dallas's one
ette and four digits. In 1961, Bll elephone announced that it
woud phase out exchange name ialing city by city. Pitsburgh andCincinnti began conversin in, 196; Philadelphia and Seattl were
the ast to chage, in 1978. The now lassic combiation of two
etters and five numbers ad been a fuly natinal standard forless
than a dcade.
Al-number callingwas introduced for seeral reasons. Manly there
weren't enogh workable lettr ombinations. Exchanes like 571 had
styed unavailable bcuse letters like JK (5) and PRS(7) wudn't
combine. All-nuber calling also eliminated cnfusinly spelled
exchanes like New Yok's Rinelander, prevened mix ups beteen
similar leters and nmbers like O an 0, and made ossible diect
dialing fromEurope and othr parts of te world. Most ountries had
nver had lettrs on their dial.
The old cetral-office ames are one from the phone bok, but theyresonate i memory. They seem tostand for a era - the era of lenn
Miller's "Pennsylvani 6-5000," f John OHara's Butterfield 8, and f
Barbara tanwyck' cloely clutched list of phone nmbers in the
cilling 1948 film Sorry, Wrong Nmber. 33-DIET ust sn't the same.
*****************
Richard Brodsky is a edicallibrrin and collector of telephone
memorabilia n Pitsurgh.
***************
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