In article <8601181850.AA09500@ucbvax.berkeley.edu> you write:
>When I was younger, there was a book published in my town that listed people
>by their name and address, and included their occupation, employer, and phone
>number. Many of the adjacent towns had similar books, all published by one
>company. Understandably, this book is no longer available to the general
>public, since it gave a lot of information that people in urban areas don't
>want floating around.
We have suburban directories published here which (last time I saw one)
included head-of-household's occupation, spouse's name, and names and year
of birth of children.
>What I'd like to know
>is what exchange names people remember. I'm afraid I've named the only
>ones I can recall.
>
> -Jim.
> "Remember when Cap'n Crunch was a cereal?"
>------
Well, I remember WAlnut and TAylor here in Minneapolis. And Cap'n Crunch
still is a cereal...
--
--
The aim of Nuclear Freeze is to prevent Nuclear Winter.
Jeff Woolsey
...ihnp4{!stolaf}!umn-cs!woolsey
woolsey@umn-cs.csnet
------------------------------
Date: Thu 23 Jan 86 10:03:41-PST
From: Doug <Faunt%HP-THOR@hplabs.arpa>
Subject: Exchange Names
I just remembered another, from Columbia SC, SUnset.
------------------------------
Date: 23 Jan 86 10:56:24 PST (Thursday)
From: Swenson.PA@Xerox.COM
Subject: Named Exchanges
I grew up in Berkeley, Calif. Berkeley had the only manual exchanges in
a sea of dial-us kids wanted to be modern & have dial phones; the adults
didn't always agree.
The exchanges I grew up with were Berkeley, Ashburry, Thornwall. Note
the capitalization-localy the two letter capitalization did not come
into use until about WWII. I still have wooden coat hangers with
advertising printed on them where the phone number is spelled with 1
letter capitalized. Party line identification: My phone was Berkeley
1199W; 1199J was across the street, while 1199 was some frends of ours
in Albany, Calif, 4 or 5 miles away, on a 1 party line. Albany grew &
finally got its own exchange, dial of course, LAndscape 5. This was the
first 3 character exchange I knew of in the Bay Area, it was used to
avoid conflicts with LAkehurst in Oakland. The number was then added to
all exchanges-probably 2 0r 3 years later. BErkeley became BErkeley-7.
Finally came reorginazation and dials. BErkeley was broken up (the
phone company did not want reginal names)-most phones were moved to
LAndscape 4 or 5 or 6 with the number unchanged. Pay phones in BErkeley
were moved to CEdar-same dial pulses.
Then came the elimination of names, just two letters +1 number and then
conversion to all numbers.
During WWII phones installed grew so much that AShburry had some five
digit numbers. This was fixed when dials came in.
Don't forget the San Francisco exchange CHina. A manual exchange,
operators spoke Cantonese & English. If the called party was not at
home, the operator would try to find him/her at other places. Long
gone, of course.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 23 Jan 86 11:20:13-PST
From: BLUCAS@SRI-KL.ARPA
Subject: Exchange Names
When I was growing up in SF we had at least 26 exchange names. With a little
help from my friends, I think I got them all--all letters of the alphabet.
At one point Phoneco added a digit to the exchange--ours became Evergreen 6,
but there was no other Evergreen. None of the exchanges in TELECOM so far
(except for the one Evergreen) duplicated SF names--and there is no common
thread apparent in the words--just what the alphabet required, I guess.
Any old SFers can have my list, but it doesn't seem as tho' it would have national appeal so I won't list them now. Thanks to the person who injected this
interesting little exercise. Barbara Lucas@SRI in California.
------------------------------
From: Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: Exchange Names
PEnnsylvania 6-5000 was in New York City. A 1976 Phila. directory has
PEnnypacker 5.
ELgin, "way out in [ Phila.] suburbs", is at Newtown Square, between
Upper Darby and West Chester along West Chester Pike (Pa. route 3).
Exchange names were dropped to:
1. save operator time by not having to spell out unfamiliar office names.
2. eliminate confusion between O and 0.
Plus, some prefixes can't be rendered as names.
------------------------------
Date: Thu 23 Jan 86 14:27:04-PST
From: HECTOR MYERSTON <MYERSTON@SRI-KL.ARPA>
Subject: Named Exchanges
How about the non-exchange, non-dialable, ZEnith X-XXXX numbers?.
These were pre 800 800 numbers. "Call you local operator and ask for
ZEnithX-XXXX, no cost to calling party".
The California Highway Patrol was (is?) ZEnith 1-9000. The
operator not only completed the call but completed it to the NEAREST
CHP office. An early example of a brain-ware defined network.
