On 2022 May 02, at 22:40, Kevin A. McGrail <kmcgr...@apache.org> wrote: > Fascinating thread I just stumbled on. Yes, in early parts of the phone > system, the letters were geographic and referenced the street for where the > central office was located switching those calls. For example, in Arlington > VA, my grandfathers number was 533-9389 which was referred to as JE3-9389 and > the CO was on Jefferson St. I'm pretty sure this fell apart rapidly as the > system grew.
At least here a lot of time the names for the changed were neighborhood names, or the name of a prominent street in the area, but not necessarily the one the CO was on. For example, the CO near where I lived when I was about 8yo was located on Pennsylvania Street, but the exchange was named Pearl, because Pearl was the street that had a small commercial district on it and, I think, had once had a streetcar line (before my time). The University exchange was 871 (UniverSity, I guess?), and most of Denver University's numbers were still in 871- in the 1990s. The whole history of telephone exchanges is filled with odd little stories, but most of the information about why and where and when has been lost, and quite. A lot of exchanges forgotten. I tired to do some research on the Denver exchanges around 20-25 years ago, but there really wasn't much there. Phone books would generally list the letters, but not the names, and sometimes the phone books were even divided by exchange first, and then names. I never had to deal with exchanges myself, but I did have to deal with a party line. Do. Not. Recommend. Especially not when you're 14 and trying to talk to this girl about serious topics over the course of several hours... -- Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
