The letter(s) dialed from an exchange name was variable until the Bell System standardized on the so-called 2L-5N format (two letters, five numbers) across the country. Before that, some places you only dialed one letter, some you dialed two and in others you dialed 3 (with 5, 6 or 7 digit numbers total). The phone book would indicate what letters were dialed by using a bold, capital font. NYC started out with 3 letter exchange names in the 1920s.TikiSoo wrote: ↑September 13th, 2023, 9:11 amHaha, we had a party line, it's all my Mom could afford. I feel SO SORRY for the people we shared with for my teenage years! Teens talk about nothing for HOURS!
Never noticed no Q.
Since I live in our family home, my phone number is GR9-XXXX for "Granite". They were just random words in alphabetic order. There is no "granite" in our City.
The reason for standardizing was to prepare for the day when a customer could dial long distance directly rather than using an operator. The switching equipment needed a standardized phone number length to figure out the routing.
Once they started the standardization process, the Bell System had an approved list of exchange names like GRanite, or CApital (in my case, but the nearest capital city was 100 miles away). The original intent was to reflect the local community, especially in large cities. But they soon ran out of meaningful exchange names as demand grew. They came up with a list of generic exchange names, but they ran out of those as well, so they pushed the exchange names out of the picture altogether starting in the late 1950s and went with "all number" dialing. It was somewhat controversial in large cities like NYC and Chicago, where the exchange name was usually closely identified with its neighborhood. You saw the same sort of thing when area codes exploded, and people in NYC (particularly Manhattan) coveted the 212 area code for some reason instead of the newer ones.
There's an episode of All in the Family where Edith starts to dial a number, reciting the exchange and 5 digits as she dials. She hangs up mid-dial and says "No! We're supposed to dial all numbers now!" and starts to re-dial. Only then does she realize it's the same number regardless...
