For instance, it seems like “I Love Lucy” would always use the KLondike-5 telephone exchange for telephone numbers.
Were the fake numbers issued in the early days always 555 numbers even before '73? If so, what exactly started in '73? Was the new thing in that year that those fake numbers would then be answered by directory assistance operators, rather than just getting a disconnected recording (which I assume is what the fake numbers got in the early years)?
The combination <area code> + 555-1212 (and its letter equivalent) was around in the early days, but I’m not sure whether any of the other 555 numbers were. People probably just used whatever numbers they had in their heads as fake numbers. They used 555 numbers, I’m sure, but also other numbers, as in the title of that song “867-5309”.
Then, in the sixties and seventies, telephone costs came down, more people could afford to throw away the money on a long-distance prank call, and the number of prank calls became a problem. Presumably then that led to the 1973 connection of all <area code> + 555-XXXX numbers to the operator.
(I remember a long distance call being a very unusual and expensive thing when I was a kid around 1970. Even around 1980 we were careful of the cost, but it wasn’t as expensive. And now, it’s a minor cost indeed.)
Note that nowadays, only the numbers between 555-0100 and 555-0199 are explicitly set aside for fake-number usage in all area codes. The Alliance for Telecommunications Solutions, an industry standards group, specifies this in its document 555 NXX Assignment Guidelines. (In this usage, “NXX” is the middle three digits of a North American phone number–the exchange code–located between the three-digit area code and the four-digit line number.)
Unfortunately, this document now requires registration to get (even though it’s free); I remember quoting it the last time I was able to download it without registration.
I answered a recent GQ about 555 numbers. I believe that the document that Sunspace is referring to is the one that I found on this page from the NANPA (North American Numbering Plan) regarding 555 numbers (click on the link that says “guidelines”). No registration necessary.
As I said in my reply there, “55X” and “57X” exchanges were reserved for radio telephone usage back in the 1950’s. Since they weren’t very common, perhaps that’s why they made good fakes for Hollywood.
I’m pretty sure that Tommy Tutone had more than a little to do with the mandatory “555” phone number. According to interviews, “Jenny” did change her number after getting repeated phone calls from young idiots who heard the song. The same thing happened just recently with Bruce Almighty and the number on Jim Carrey’s pager. It must have sucked to work at the phone company about those times!
Some very early history may have influenced this. Some people claim that all fives was used for a test number in early step-by-step switching equipment, leading to 555 as an “unused” exchange, and a convenient part of the dial plan to use for special numbers such as directory assitance later on:
(A couple of paragraphs above that, a statement concerning “standard” North American 7 digit numbers is misleading at best. Large cities may have been using 7 digit numbers early on, but many small towns had 4 and 5 number plans until the arrival of DDD in the 1950’s)
The NANPA formalized existing conventions in this area.
Well, not unless the song generated a time warp - “Jenny” was released in 1982, and 1973, “I Love Lucy”, or even earlier, the convention had been well established before then. And as you observe with “Bruce Almighty”, they still aren’t LEGALLY obligated to follow it. In the case of “Jenny”, the song author at least has the excuse that “555” wouldn’t fit the melody, even if he had been trying for a non-existent phone number (maybe he was - Snopes finds the idea that there was a real “Jenny” whose real phone number was used in the song “debateable”, and observes that the number forms a geometric pattern on the touchtone pad.)
That stupid 867-5309 number causes exasperation to this day, although some auto dealer who had the number attempted to sell it on ebay:
If anybody has time on their hands, IIRC volume II of “History of the Bell System” has about 200 pages on the evolution of the North American Dialing Plan. I glossed over it once and only recall titillating nuggets like “… and in March 1934 the Parsippany to NY trunk line failed due to floods in the area, so the whole Parsipanny VEntriloquist exchange was mapped to Camden’s CHiropody with a leading ‘9’ until November 12.”… talk about a real page-turner !
Technically, yes, but the usual splatter of numbers you get most of the time isn’t a pattern you would notice to call attention to. Snopes’ point was that it formed 3 upwards diagonals. I DO wonder what percentage of phone numbers happen to form something a large number of people would consider notable.
Aside - I used to know somebody who could only call many numbers that she had committed to memory from touch tone phones because she had memorized the positions of the buttons she pushed, not the actual numbers. To tell you one of those phone numbers she had to pick up a phone, or at least mentally picture the touchtone pad, and go through the sequence to see what buttons she was pushing.