# Old Timey Telephone Numbers **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 15, 2018, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956 "2018-07-15T18:22:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/61 "2018-07-16T21:25:06Z")
Growing up in Westchester County, NY in the early 1960s you used the last 5 digits for local calls ---
**Author:** ![Mr\_Zox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Mr\_Zox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Zox)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/62 "2018-07-16T21:58:20Z")
I am told that where I’m living now had a small, local phone company. 60 or so years back, everyone had a 4 digit number, and there were 3-5 exchanges. You dialled 4 digits for your own exchange, or got the operator for a different one (and for non-local calls). Later, it was set up so 4 digits would dial a local number; if you wanted another exchange, you dialed one digit, and waited for “the other dial tone” then dialed the number you wanted. If the in-your-exchange number started with one of the “exchange numbers” you just made sure to dial the second number without a delay. A few years later, it was changed so you always had to dial 5 digits, no matter which exchange you wanted. Of course, reaching anything outside that company’s area meant going through an operator. When the local company was forced to use 3-digit exchange numbers, sometime in the mid-80’s, they just tripled the old exchange numbers. Byt the 90’s, they stopped using them for new subscribers. So, around here, if you see a 222- or 888- etc., number, it means it’s had the same owner for a while. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/63 "2018-07-16T22:01:15Z")
> [@Dorjan](#): > > Garfield 1-2323 > > Garfield 1-2323! > > The Northeast Ohio folks on the board will get it 😉 Arrrgggh I can still hear that tune. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/64 "2018-07-16T22:10:20Z")
What did the Garfield1-2323 company make, anyway? Insulation, or siding, or something? Their ads were completely memorable, except for the most important part of an ad. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/65 "2018-07-16T22:27:18Z")
Did “exchanges” eventually morph into area codes? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/66 "2018-07-16T22:59:07Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > Did “exchanges” eventually morph into area codes? No, area codes were to allow direct distance dialing outside of your region, since 7 digits were far from enough for the entire country. [Not everyone was happy.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHTazxaQ9bs) ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2018, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/67 "2018-07-16T23:38:20Z")
> [@Toledo Jim](#): > > Somewhere around here, I have an invoice from Tiedtke’s (Toledo store, now defunct), dated 1920-something, which has two phone numbers: Bell phone and Home phone. They were competing systems, if you had a Bell phone you couldn’t call anybody with a Home phone, and vice versa. They were both three digit numbers. That wasn’t real common, but yeah, some cities had competing telephone companies - usually Ma Bell and some other upstart. If you never wanted to call someone outside of the area, the local company might be a decent choice, but getting a connection to a Bell line to make a long distance call could be anywhere from challenging to impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/68 "2018-07-17T00:37:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What did the Garfield1-2323 company make, anyway? Insulation, or siding, or something? Their ads were completely memorable, except for the most important part of an ad. They don’t even have[a real name](https://www.garfield12323.com/)! ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/69 "2018-07-17T00:45:32Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > ETA: And back in the day, click-counts were still used for phone numbers instead of tones. To dial 411, you could just tap the hang-up bar: Click-click-click-click Pause Click Pause Click. You had to have quick fingers to “dial” a number with an 8, 9 or 0 (actually ten) this way. rotary-Dial telephones were often locked (where you wanted to prevent people from making calls) by putting a lock on the rotary dial. Even with 7 digit numbers, if you were careful you could dial using the hook-break. Privately operated public phones sometimes had internal electric switch, connected to the pay mechanism, and /really slow/ mechanically damped hook mechanism, to stop people dialing for free. And… public phones in Aus in the 60’s allowed you to dial and connect for free. the coin mechanism was connected to the microphone. So you could signal just by calling, or, if you were young and broke, you could shout into the earpiece. The [“hybrid”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_hybrid) in the phone wasn’t perfect, and would allow a small amount of leakage. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/70 "2018-07-17T01:37:32Z")
I grew up on a farm in central Kansas. Our situation may have been unique in the fact that our small town had its own independent telephone company (and still does). As mentioned above, our phone was mounted on the wall, with a crank, a receiver to listen on and a cup to talk into. We were on a party line; our ‘ring code’ was a long ring and a short ring. Others on the line had codes of 2 shorts and a long, 2 longs, etc. Our party line identifier was ‘104’. Because our ring code was a long and a short, our number was 104-01, where the ‘0’ meant a long ring and the ‘1’ a short ring. So our neighbors’ numbers were 104-110, 104-00, etc. To call somebody who wasn’t on our party line, you dialed one long ring, which rang the operator. She would respond with ‘Number, please’, and you would give her the number you wanted. (Grandpa’s number was 123-01.) If it was a long distance call, you told her the city, state, and number. The local phone company upgraded to dial telephones in 1963. As also previously mentioned, we all had the same 3-digit prefix, so you could call anybody on the exchange with just 4 numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/71 "2018-07-17T03:08:59Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > That’s interesting, in that I don’t recall hearing two words used to represent the first two letters in those days. Our phone number was MOhawk 8-4567; meaning MO = 66. The first two letters of the word were used to represent the numbers. > > Looking further into this, I see that per wiki’s [Telephone Exchange Names](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names), most examples cited use the one word/first two letter format I mention above. And while there is a citation for using MUrray Hill, it represents 68, _not_ 64, because the letters MU are the stand-ins for the number, not the letters MH. The phone numbers where I currently live were MOhawk back in the day, although “the day” was before I moved here. I found an archived email a list of [“recommended” exchange names](http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/archives/history/exchange.names.recommended) from Bell. Five for each two digit combination. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/72 "2018-07-17T06:14:18Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It would seem so. From wikipedia: > > Slightly later, I can still remember as a kid hearing on TV: dial Murray Hill 8-4521 (the numbers are made up). That’s a NYC number and the first two numbers of the phone number were MH = 64 No, I’m pretty sure it was MUrray Hill, making the first two numbers 68. In L.A. the prefix 825-, which was assigned (mostly) to phones at UCLA spells out “UCL”, but it seems that was just a coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/73 "2018-07-17T06:20:49Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > Some of those exchanges have been made famous over time, such as “Butterfield-8,” as in John O’Hara. > > And, of course, my favorite, AND still today, the phone number for the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York City … > > (Just played this recently too, not only ran down the bass line but triangle solo for the ringer!) Similarly, the number at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel is HOllywood 6-7000, and 7000 also happens to be its address on Hollywood Boulevard. The exchange name HOllywood was used in many places around the country, as it was included in a list of suggested exchange names intended for ease of understanding given the limitations of sound transmission, but in Hollywood itself it may well have been a throwback to the earliest days when exchanges tended to be named for the communities they were in. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/74 "2018-07-17T06:22:36Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > I seem to remember that Manhattan’s exchange was TUxedo. Mine in the Jersey suburbs was PIgrim. Surely you don’t think that one single exchange sufficed for all of Manhattan? ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/75 "2018-07-17T06:28:26Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#): > > On campus (mid-late 70’s), since all phones were the same exchange you could reach anyone by just dialing the last 4 digits of their number. But the “fun” part was that if you initiated the call, only you could end the call. That is to say if you refused to hang up, the person you called could not place another call. We used this “feature” to harass the campus radio station into playing songs we wanted to hear. Yeah, we were assholes. We had much the same thing at UCSD, around that same time. All on-campus numbers began with the prefix 452-, and you only had to dial the last four digits to reach another campus phone. I never heard about callers refusing to hang up and blocking the other person’s phone, though. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/76 "2018-07-17T06:33:28Z")
In L.A. at some point, years before ten-digit dialing became mandatory, you had to dial “1” and then the seven-digit number for certain prefixes; those were all relatively far away although still in the 213 area code. This must have been in the late 1970s or possibly early 80s, before the San Fernando Valley was switched to the 818 area code. It was all 213 back then, from the mountains to the sea and over the hill as well. Today 213 occupies a tiny area of DTLA and is among the geographically smallest area codes in the system. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/77 "2018-07-17T06:43:46Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Those words were called “exchanges.” When I was growing up, our exchange was ATlantic; there was also ATwater in the same city, which was confusing. As far as the technical implications went, ATlantic and ATwater would have used mutually exclusive third digits. Beverly Hills CA and a few adjacent neighborhoods all had 27x- numbers–CRestview, BRadshaw, and a third one I’ve recently seen in historical materials, but I don’t remember what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/78 "2018-07-17T06:47:45Z")
> [@Toledo\_Jim](#): > > Somewhere around here, I have an invoice from Tiedtke’s (Toledo store, now defunct), dated 1920-something, which has two phone numbers: Bell phone and Home phone. They were competing systems, if you had a Bell phone you couldn’t call anybody with a Home phone, and vice versa. They were both three digit numbers. It was similar in L.A., where they had Main and Home; this was mostly pre-WWI. As in your example I think businesses had to maintain accounts with two phone companies to make sure they could be reached from either system. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/79 "2018-07-17T07:00:12Z")
Another really old guy----the first telephone I remember was a box on the wall with a separate piece you held to your ear; you spoke into a horn on the box. I thought it was pure magic. In our small town, my mother would pick up the ear piece, turn the crank on the box and say something like—“Thelma, this is RoxaLee, I want to talk to Dorothy.” And it always worked. We got our first dial phone in the early 1950s; our first number was 4941. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2018, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956/80 "2018-07-17T13:48:14Z")
> [@ThelmaLou](#): > > As long as we’re talking old-timey numbers, there was a time when the first two “numbers” of a seven-digit phone number were actually the first two letters of a word, e.g., CApital 3-9471, PErshing 2-4816, DIamond 22-414. It was handy, because the word (what was that word called–anyone know?) told you what part of town the number was in. CApital was downtown, PErshing was in my neighborhood, TAylor was the high-rent part of town, OXford was west part of town, etc. It was the two letters and the first number actually. DIamond-2 would be a different exchange than DIamond-4. Except for cell phones messing everything up – my nephew kept his Phoenix-based cell number when he moved to Washington, DC – it holds true today; you can get an idea of where someone lives if you know where the prefixes are located. Those three digits, or letters and digits, identify the Local Office your line is tied to. Back in the day when everything was handled by manual operators, as many as 10,000 subscribers (hence the four digits after the prefix) would be in the same office and depending on the number you ask for, they would connect you easily with someone in the same local office or connect you to the local office of the recipient who would then complete the connection. Those operators are long gone but when you pick up a phone, the dialtone is from your local office and robots complete your call. Long distance calls were a whole different kettle of fish. There were trunk lines between cities, but not all of them. Atlanta, for example, might have connections to Chicago and Denver but not Houston. There were special operators, called Rate and Route operators, who knew that stuff and your local operator would work with (usually) her to establish the link. You might recall in some old movies someone _making_ a long distance call waiting for a callback from the operator. An uncommon route could take twenty minutes or more to figure out. The local offices were automated ages ago but automating long distance was so complicated it wasn’t even started until the mid-fifties and completed more than a decade later. Oldsters among us (raises hand) can remember when Direct Dial was a Very Big Deal. My last manual long distance call was in 1986. I said, “I’m wanting to call Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley and it says to dial 00 and ask for operator 57, so here I am.” She said, “Wow! It’s been a while since I’ve had to make a connection.” It took only about two minutes. If you want to spend hours perusing this stuff, I recommend [_Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws who Hacked Ma Bell_](https://www.amazon.com/Exploding-Phone-Untold-Teenagers-Outlaws-ebook/dp/B009SAV5W0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1531832701&sr=1-1&keywords=exploding+the+phone). It is mostly about how the phone phreaks used as a playground what was then the world’s biggest network that nobody at Bell figured would be attractive for hacking. The early chapters cover the earliest days of Bell, from manual operators to the triumph of automated long distance. Full disclosure: The writer is a friend of mine [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/old-timey-telephone-numbers/817956.md?page=5)