For a businessman in Trenton who wants to
call the Western Electric Co. in Manhattan—but doesn't know the
number—it is about as easy as falling off a logarithm: first he dials
2125551212 , then 2125712345 for Western
Electric. If he is lucky he won't have to give an extension number for the
man he wants to talk to; if he is luckier, he can still remember why he was
calling
in the first place.This numerologicl nightmare is only a foretaste of what the future holds for
dialers when the Bell Telephone System's ANC plan
goes
into effect all over the U.S. Already 11 million of the 76 million telephones in
the U.S. are on ANC. The Bell System and 3,000 independent companies
expect to convert all telephones in five years a projected 95 million.Lost Lust. In the Orwellian world of ANC there will be no telephone
exchanges
to take pride of comfort in. Philadelphia's old-guard PEnnypacker and
stalwart
FIdelity will be gone; San Francisco will lose its lusty KLondike and sunny
VAlencia; Mobile's TUlip will wither alongside Cincinnati's BRamble and
Santa Fe's YUcca. Fenton, MO., will be torn from it's cozy FIreside, while
Chester, Pa., and its saucy GYpsy will be parted. NIghtingale and HYacinth
will nevermore breathe their poetry over Brooklyn's wires. The sands are
running out fpr such venerable status symbols as Upper East Side
Manhattan's BUtterfield 8 and REgent 4. They will some day be as obsolete
as
morning coats on Easter Sunday.Official AMerican Telephone & Telegraph Co., proprietors of the Bell
System, admits
a twinge of REgret over the passing of the time-honored names, many of
which are holdovers from the days of “Hello, Central, give me Main
444.” But the
telephone company maintains that there is no other choice in the face
of rapidly expanding dialing facilities and the increase in the number
of telephone sets across the nation. Letters & Holes. There are only eight holes with three letters each
on the dial , producing 64 possible
two-letter combinations for exchange-namers to work with. But four of the combinations involving letters J, K, L, P, R, S, W, X, Y
are deemed useless on the ground that no one could countenance a
telephone number beginning with something like YPres, YLang, WRath or
KRemlin. That leaves only 60. Even with an additional number tacked
onto the two-letter code, creating exchanges like PRospect 1 up through
PRospect 9, there are still only 540 combinations available. This was
more than enough until Direct Distance Dialing came on the scene in
1951. The U.S. is now divided into 105 code areas, each having its own
three-digit number; within any single DDD area, no two telephone
numbers can be the same—and simple mathematics shows that
540 central
offices are not enough for some of the more populous dialing areas. All-Number Calling was the answer to the dilemma. Numbers appear at ten
holes on a dial, and ANC gives 800 possible
three-digit central-office codes* an increase of nearly 50%.
