I was surprised that nobody brought up the three-letter exchanges.
It's all PE 6, BU 8, etc etc.  

I am sure those once were BUT and PEN.
The 8 in BUtterfield 8 is the T, and the 6 in PEnnsylvania 6 is the N.

Illinois Bell went from UNIversity to UNiversity 4 (in Evanston) 
during my lifetime (sigh) and also introduced UNiversity 9 
because of the need for more numbers.  Later, 864- and 869-.

How do we figure out when they went from 3 letters
to 2 letters and a number?  Look in old phone books, I guess.
Actually for Chicago I could look in the Chicago Tribune on-line archives,
but they're off line at the moment.
For NYC you all have the NYTimes archives.

My first number in Chicago was 248-3959.  
When I was offered several numbers, from various exchanges,
I picked that one because it turned out that 248 was BIttersweet 8.
Loved that exchange name.  (Think chocolate.)
Later I learned that there really was (is) a Bittersweet Place. 
Just off the lake shore on the North Side.

Landmarks Illinois's phone number is 922-1742; 922 is WABash.
And my home phone is 878- as in UPTown.
But my business phone 996- is 
a meaningless ahistorical modern number.

We used to play the game of taking a 7-digit phone number
and trying to form a word that spelled those 7 numbers.
Not easy.  Of course 996- could have been WYOming.
See?





Martin C. Tangora
University of Illinois at Chicago
[log in to unmask]

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://listserv.icors.org/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>