These days, telephone numbers are just…numbers. A sequence of digits which, when entered into your phone correctly, should bring you in contact with the owner of number who should be the person you want to speak to. Simple, isn’t it? And yet, some of us may remember a time, perhaps not too long ago, when a telephone-number didn’t start with a number, but rather a series of letters or a word. Welcome to nostalgic and at times, confusing world of alphanumeric telephone numbers.
The telephone was invented in the 1870s, but it wasn’t until the early 1900s that its use really took off, once all the little kinks and kooks had been worked out, transforming this newfangled contraption into a practical communication-device. In the early days of telephone-usage, numbers were small – 1, 2, 3 or 4 digits long. It was easy for telephone switchboard operators to connect the leads left and right and remember everything. As time went by, however, and as more people started being hooked up to the machine which gradually entered popular culture being called the ‘bell’ or ‘pipe’ (such as ‘give me a bell!’ or ‘tell me over the pipe!’, which I suspect is a holdover from the days of old-fashioned speaking-tubes), numbers needed to be longer and longer to accomadate the extra customers. And with telephone-usage growing in big cities, it was obvious that one main switchboard wasn’t enough to handle everything.
A page from a telephone directory for Canning, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1958. Note how the numbers are set out and how they’re listed. Here, the exchange-name is ‘JUniper’. Mr. Arthur Caldwell’s number, (top left) is JUniper 2-3404, or 582-3404.
To overcome this, extra telephone-exchanges were set up to cope with the traffic. Each one was given a different name and number so that more telephone numbers could be assigned and used. For example, the number 49312 could only ever be assigned to one person, but with multiple exchanges, you could have REdbrook-49312 and perhaps SYcamore-49312, allowing people to use the same number without messing up the telephone-lines.
Telephone Exchanges.
As numbers grew longer and longer and more exchange switchboards were set up to handle them, each exchange was given a number to identify it by. Exchanges were given special names so that people could remember them easier. The names were determined by the numbers which identified a specific telephone-exchange. For example an exchange assigned the ID numbers ‘944’, would spell out ‘WHI’ on a lettered telephone dial. A word starting with those three letters would then be assigned as that exchange’s name. This is a real example, by the way. The exchange-name is ‘Whitehall’, which is a suburb in London.
By the way…if you’ve ever wondered why telephones today HAVE those letter designations:
0 Operator
1 –
2 ABC
3 DEF
4 GHI
etc etc etc…It’s a leftover from the days of alphanumeric phone-numbers, when people needed to know which letters were covered by which numbers, so that they could be assured of dialling the correct telephone exchange switchboard.
A typical rotary telephone-dial of the period, showing which letters were covered by which numbers. ‘0’ was used to contact the switchboard operator. The original number for this phone was OLympic 4-6753, or 654-6753.
The amount of letters at the start of the exchange-name which stood for the exchange’s ID-number, varied from country to country, and even from city to city within a country! The number of letters was usually the first two or first three in any given exchange-name. In the United Kingdom, three letters followed by four numbers (3L-4N) was the rule. So ‘Whitehall 1212’ would be “WHItehall 1212”, or 944-1212.
In the United States, by comparison, phone-numbers followed the 2L-5N (two letters, five numbers) rule. This meant that the first two letters of the exchange-name stood for numbers. Notable exceptions to this rule were cities of New York, Philidelphia, Boston and Chicago, which followed the British example of 3L-4N. This brought up exchange-names like ‘PENnsylvania’, ‘TREmont’ and ‘ELDorado’. Since the rest of the country did 2L-5N, this could create some understandable confusion to people who weren’t from the US. East Coast. Eventually, these cities conformed with the rest of the nation, altering their phone-numbers so that instead of the above, they had numbers like: ‘PEnnsylvania 65000’ or ‘ELdorado 51234, to avoid confusion.
If you’re wondering why I’m typing the exchanges like ‘LAMbeth’ or ‘KLondike’…this is how they were actually printed, ‘back in the day…’. The capital letters in the exchange-name told you which numbers to dial to get the exchange, by reading the capitalised letters and dialling the corresponding numbers on your phone-dial (which had numbers assigned to specific groups of letters).
A typical telephone-exchange switchboard, ca. 1943. When you count how many leads and cables and sockets there are, it’s no wonder people wanted short numbers so that you didn’t clutter everything up!
The end of Alphanumeric Telephone Numbers.
Alphanumeric phone numbers began to die out in the 1960s-1970s when it was recognised that there were more telephone-numbers than exchanges to handle them and in the 1960s and 70s, communications companies started switching to all-digit numbers, the kind we know today. Few people today still use alphanumeric phone numbers and even fewer people would understand them. If you had to suddenly leave from a coffee with a friend and you told him to call you back on ‘CAstle-38742’, he probably wouldn’t have a damn clue what you were saying! Eh…incidently, that’s 223-8742. Today, the numbers remain as an interesting bit of cultural and telephonic history, if nothing more.
Alphanumeric telephone numbers used in this Article:
WHItehall-1212: This was the number for New Scotland Yard, London, England. 944-1212. The number has changed slightly over the years, but as of 2009, it still ends in ‘1212’. An old 1950s British radio program dealing with the cases of Scotland Yard, was called ‘Whitehall 1212’.
DEAnsgate-3414: This was the number for Kendals department store in Manchester, England. That’s 332-3414.
ELDorado-1234: This was the (fictional) phone-number of the office of Richard Diamond, the famous NYC private detective, the main character of a highly popular 1950s radio show (see ‘The Golden Age of Radio, below). Sticking to the 3L-4N format, this would be 353-1234.
PEnnsylvania-65000: Originally ‘PENnsylvania-5000’, it was changed to PEnnsylvania-65000 when New York switched to the 2L-5N format. This number remains the oldest, continuously-used phone-number in New York City. Issued in 1919, it has belonged to the Hotel Pennsylvania in central Manhattan for the past 90 years! Dialling that number today (736-5000) still gets you the Hotel Pennsylvania, just as it did 60-odd years ago when Glenn Miller wrote his song! It’s usually spoken or written as ‘Pennsylvania six, five thousand’, because ‘Pennsylvania sixty-five thousand’ sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?
The current header for the Hotel Pennsylvania’s website. Note the phone-number on the bottom right: 736-5000.
CAstle 3-8742: I admit I made this number up on the spot. Whether or not it ever really existed, I’ve no idea!
I grew up in Chicago and circa 1950 our phone number was
NEwcastle 1 -2xxx. Note that is in the 2L5N format which contradicts the article. Before that, according to my sister, we had a party-line and the number was just the 2xxx portion.
I did try to figure out which was the more common format (2L5N or 3L4N), but no research that I carried out showed me which of the two was more popular, or for which parts of the world.
when younger had ZENith 5456 was the local forest fire service number and there were other ZENith “party” lines around and this was 1990! in country canada
How about a list of the words used for the pre-fix…were they the same for all the US, or did they differ in each city/region?
Good quesiton…
I also remember that in Chicago (and I presume other cities) we would call a number for the time of day. I saw some graffiti in a phone booth (remember those) that was “For A Good Time Call CA8-8000”
I’d have to confirm the 2L5N format for Chicago, my dad’s phone number as he grew up on the south side was Hilltop 5-XXXX or 445-XXXX, my grandfather still maintains this number.
Wow! This has created some lively discussion. I tried my best to figure out the…intricacies behind and between 2L5N, 3L4N, but no research that I’ve done has told me which was used where or when. I always thought that 3L4N was more common, though.
I find it hard to remember Scotland Yard’s number – I was raised using alphanumerics and Whitehall 1212 is still what I think when I want their number. Somethings just stick to the brain like glue!
Through the 90s, the Plaza Hotel in New York City used PL9-3000 as their phone number in ads and on stationery and the like. They were very proud that their hotel’s name was used as the exchange, even when no one know what the hell it was.
Great article! My grandparents had the same phone number for what seems like forever. It now belongs to my parents. Mother remembers when it was just five digits, 85XXX. I suspect that it was probably TRiangle 8-5XXX (or some such other ’87’ letter combo) at some time as it is 878-5XXX, but I have not been able to find out. Perhaps there were areas where the words were not used and just switched wholesale to all seven digits? (Suburban Dayton, Ohio)
The one thing about alphanumeric numbers that always puzzled me was the one used for the title of the book and film BUtterfield 8 — it was only 3 digits long. I thought alphanumeric numbers were introduced once phone numbers became 7 digits long — so wouldn’t dialing “BUtterfield 8” just end up being an incomplete call?
Hi. “BUtterfield 8” would have been the exchange name. Much like “PEnsylvannia 6” (5,000).
Nowadays we see letters again being used in telephone numbers, but more as a memory aid (more correctly, a mnemonic) to keep the number in mind.
For example, a casino near me has the toll-free number 1-888-523-9582. Kinda tough to remember that way, but if you knew it instead as 1-888-LADY LUCK and dialed that, you would still end up talking to someone at the switchboard of the Lady Luck casino.
Other instances are when numbers are selected based on the last four digits spelling out something related to the business or individual — LEAK (5325) or PIPE (7473) for a plumber, BIKE (2453) or PEDL (7335) for a bicycle shop, or WINE (9463) for a bar or liquor store.
I once heard it said that “if telephone usage continues to grow at this rate, every woman in the US will be needed as an Operator.” This has, in fact, become true. We now use “Direct Distance Dialing” and everyone (man and woman) is the “Operator” for phone calls. The “all number” system needed to be put in place because it would be hard to train everyone to know the prefix letters.
I was born in the 90s, so I’m obviously too young to have used numbers like these (although I do distinctly remember when they started requiring you to add the area code to the number you wanted to dial). However, I watched a ton of I Love Lucy when I was growing up and I remember when Ricky or someone else would pick up the phone and say “Hello operator, can you give me Circle 73748” or whatever the number was. I had a vague idea of what it meant, but this article really cleared some things up from my childhood!
Chicago switched from 3L4N to 2L5N numbers in early 1948. In most cases, the third letter became the first digit. If your number had been DEArborn 1234 in 1947, it became DEarborn 2-1234 in 1948. It became 332-1234 when all remaining 2L5N numbers still listed in the Chicago phone book were changed to all numbers sometime around 1974.
When I started my career with Bell Canada, as an Operator in Ontario, in 1973 we were not using the alpha numeric system. However it was quite common to encounter Michigan numbers still asked for that way. That switchboard picture brought back memories as Bell Ontario did not replace them with computers til 1980, and still retained the cord board for mobile and marine calls as late as 1986.
I understand how all this worked I had a friend ask me if there is anyway of finding the old 2 letter prefix for Jefferson township NJ ? Let me know at tristanspoppop@yahoo.com
Hi Janice,
Your best bet is to try and track down old phone-directories. That should give you the information that you need.
You may be able to find old directories on microfiche at your local or state/provincial capital library. They are considered historic documents. You might also want to try a reverse look-up directory. They were published privately back in the 70’s.
I am trying to find out when they used only two numbers for phone numbers. I have a item at home in my collection and the phone number on it is 50. Anyone know what time frame that could be from, and how do you look up who the number belonged to.
It’s either really early, or it was part of a private switchboard, would be my guess.
I grew up in the 50’s in a small town in Georgia. Our telephone number was 19. The operator would answer when the handpiece was removed from the hook. She (always a she) would say either, “operator” or “number please”. She would have pronounce our telephone number “one niyun.”
I came to this article via an internet search about alphanumeric numbers for Telephone Exchanges in London, England.
I was born in 1948 and so became very familiar with the ‘old’ style.
I needed to contact the Public Transport organisation for the Greater London Area, now called “Transport for London” but previously just “LondonTransport”
Back in those days LT as it was also known ran the buses (mostly red – but also Green with either the “Greenline” name for longer journeys or “London Country” for shorter routes on the outskirts of Greater London. LT also ran what we called “The Underground” or “the Tube” (Subway) railway despite long sections actually being on the surface!
Anyway they had a central enquiry telephone number – ending in 1234 – but I could not remember the Alpha Prefix – though I correctly presumed it is STILL (in number form) in use today – AND it is in use & is – 222.
Now it is expressed as 222 1234 (with an extra prefix still – which has changed every decade or so and is – in case you need it – TODAY 0343-222-1234 (I have not kept up with the changes & cannot explain the relevance of 0343)
However I puzzled over the 222 – part – it actually stands for ABBey – the physical location of the headquarters where a friend once worked – was in offices close to the St James Park Underground Station, which is in WESTMINSTER and so near WESTMINSTER +ABBEY+ – that place where we have been crowning kings & queens since Christmas day 1066!
Are you still with me?
Being a bit of an obsessive – I read your article – and differ with one part – as far as London is concerned – which I hope I have demonstrated – in my long winded explanation – in London, the numbers for Exchange names were turned into an alpha numeric code rather than the Exchange number being given an alphabetical code.
So the Telephone Exchange of my childhood home was LARskwood – was thus named for a small wooded area between what were then the neighbouring towns of – Walthamstow and Chingford – which by the time I left in 1970 was announced (as per the layout of the telephone dial) 520 xxxx.
I guess it was different in some parts of the USA, with numbers turned into an alpha code prefix!
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