GotPasswords said, "This will (heh) ring a bell for Chicagoans:
[deep bass voice] HUdson 3-2700 [/foghorn] - Boushelle Carpet.
How 'bout, “Call Mohawk 4-4100 Heap Big “T” for Television.”
I hate Hate HATE “word numbers”. I hate having to look up the letter for each number. Would it kill adwriters to repeat “1-800-639-2277” after their cute little wordnumber?
In my town there was only one exchange, PIoneer 3, or 743, for about thirty years. You dialed “3” plus four digits for all local calls. People are still used to giving out their phone numbers as four digits even tho we now have TWO (** Count 'Em, TWO! **) exchanges now, 743 and 746.
Of course, no one needs to give out their numbers, anyway; everyone’s in the (very small) book! Unlisted numbers are rare – why would you want an unlisted one? No one could find you in the book!
When I was a wee mite, our phone number was CRestview 5-####, and then it changed to 275-####. My parents still have this number today. The interesting thing is, though that Beverly Hills had both the CRestview and BRadshaw exchanges, which translate to the same numbers on the dial. I’m not sure, but I think in the old days you could have had BR#-#### and CR#-### with the last five numbers the same, and yet they would be different phones in different houses.
I love word numbers. =]
Since I don’t think this has been posted yet, you can find all the possible words a phone number spells at PhoNETic. And you can find a list of names for exchanges at The Telephone EXchange Name Project.
Unfortunately, the proliferation of 1’s and 0’s (and 9’s, for that matter, considering the number of words with W, X or Y) in newly-issued phone numbers makes it hard to get a meaningful mnemonic without trying… but I’ve still found a few interesting ones.
Didn’t many in New York CIty hold out until the 1980s and 1990s? I remember ads from NYC television stations that we got on cable that used phone numbers with words. I’ve also seen old-timey phone numbers on vans and trucks in fairly recent street scenes in NYC
I grew up with a four-digit number, then we had to dial just the ‘2’ from ‘VIctor-2’, and finally ‘842’. My mother still has the same number, after nearly 50 years. I think my home town is still running on one exchange.
My roommate (20 years ago) and I were delighted when we deciphered our number as:
MY-ROBOT
Imagine our glee when were successful in changing it from 697-6268 to 697-3647
(MY-PENIS). Easy to remember!
Which is still the telephone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania (though now you have to dial 212 first from anywhere in the city).
MINE, TOO!
In Northeast Philly, my phone number was PIoneer 3-XXXX (and said so on the rotary dial) and changed to merely PI3-XXXX sometime before memory serves…up until the early 80s when it simply became 743-XXXX
That would have been possible only before rotary dials were put on phones – human operators would be able to distinguish Crestview 5 from Bradshaw 5. But as soon as dials are available, dialing either exchange would produce the same numbers (275), so the “last five numbers” could not have been the same if they were assigned to two different phones.