People loved the literary charm of their old telephone exchange names, and groups like the Anti-Digit Dialing League and the Committee of Ten Million to Oppose All-Number Calling were formed to protest the switch.Ĭrazy, right? People actually used to pick up the phone and make calls. The change did not happen without some resistance, however. In the late 1950s and throughout the next two decades, United States phone systems began switching to all-number calling, which didn't rely on archaic telephone exchanges and could exponentially add customers just by introducing new area codes. You can see the list of names for each telephone exchange here.Īround this same time, area codes were introduced, but they were used mostly by operators and not customers. The specific words used to identify the two-letter codes weren't standardized, but rather recommended by AT&T/Bell in their Notes on Nationwide Dialing, 1955, which was distributed around the country as people started to make more and more long-distance calls. Similar-sounding letters would cause confusion, so distinct names or phrases were preferred. This is also why phones still have three-letter chunks over numbers 2-8 (and four letters over 9).įull words were used in order to help customers remember the telephone exchange name, and because they were easy to understand, especially for switchboard operators. 1950 Phone Book Telephone Directory Little Rock Arkansas Southwestern Bell. The Ricardo's MUrray Hill5-9975 meant their number was 685-9975 ("Hill" and its capital H served purely as a mnemonic), with the 68, or "MU," representing the East Side of Manhattan's telephone exchange. 1980 VINTAGE PHONE Book Telephone Directory Ottawa Williamsburg Kansas KS.
Because these telephone exchanges could only facilitate around 10,000 subscribers, many large cities had multiple hubs.
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