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Date: | Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:34:26 -0600 |
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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]
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