Local Phone Dialing Change

[youbet]

I still have rotary dial phones, so ordering pizza is a chore.

I have one! I keep it to confuse youngsters who stop by.

 

[Gumby]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I just recalled that when I was a boy, living in Hawaii, we originally only had 6 digits in our telephone number. They must have run out of numbers, because shortly before we moved back to the Mainland in 1970 they added another digit.

 

[youbet]

I've always had 7 digits but do remember party lines and phone exchanges that contained alpha's. Our number in the city was Newcastle 1 - 2175. That was dialed as NE1- 2175. If you moved out of the Newcastle area, you couldn't take your number with you.

 

[Gumby]

I've always had 7 digits but do remember party lines and phone exchanges that contained alpha's. Our number in the city was Newcastle 1 - 2175. That was dialed as NE1- 2175. If you moved out of the Newcastle area, you couldn't take your number with you.

One of my rotary phones still has the card in the middle of the dial with the number on it, LOcust 2-2396, which was in New Haven, CT.

A note for history buffs - New Haven was the site of the very first telephone exchange in the US. It was built in 1878 by Mr. George W. Coy, of Milford, CT (my town).

https://www.ctexplored.org/coy-takes-the-telephone-to-the-masses/#prettyPhoto

 

[GalaxyBoy]

With cell phones being ubiquitous these days, is “long distance” at all relevant?

 

[GalaxyBoy]

Oh, and speaking of the youngsters being confused, Dear Aunt told us the other day a story about her granddaughter, who is old enough to be married. She encountered a touch tone phone and couldn’t figure out how to use it. She was punching in the numbers before lifting the handset. After all, that’s how the cell phone works.

 

[rk911]

I've always had 7 digits but do remember party lines and phone exchanges that contained alpha's. Our number in the city was Newcastle 1 - 2175. That was dialed as NE1- 2175. If you moved out of the Newcastle area, you couldn't take your number with you.

PI-lgrim 8-4008! Then we had SK-yline and one other I can't recall. i'm feeling old.

when my grandparents moved to rural SE Missouri in 1959 they had a 7-digit number on a party line. I think their ring was 2-longs. the party line disappeared a few years later.

 

[Lsbcal]

How do iPhones handle this transition? When I look at my contacts list most show something like (707) XXX-XXXX. So does the 10 digit change happen automatically for iPhones? I imagine if the area code is not already in the contact list I have to edit those. Sound right?

Our change over date to 10 digits is Oct 24th.

 

[rk911]

How do iPhones handle this transition? When I look at my contacts list most show something like (707) XXX-XXXX. So does the 10 digit change happen automatically for iPhones? I imagine if the area code is not already in the contact list I have to edit those. Sound right?

Our change over date to 10 digits is Oct 24th.

i just tried dialing a 7-digit number that is not in our contact list. it would not connect. dialing a 7-digit number that was in our contact list found the match and connected the call.

 

[ERD50]

i just tried dialing a 7-digit number that is not in our contact list. it would not connect. dialing a 7-digit number that was in our contact list found the match and connected the call.

But is the one in your contact list in the same Area Code as your phone? I assume a mobile phone will assume (that's a lot of assumptions!) the number is the same Area Code if not provided.

I'm no sure how it could "find a match" from a phone number to an outside Area Code. We have Area Codes so that those numbers can be reused. A 7 digit phone number has a "one to many" relationship. Many 'matches'.

-ERD50

 

[Out-to-Lunch]

Was this also true for area codes which covered large swaths of rural territory within a state, but not the whole state?

I think so. I seem to recall when I was young learning the distinction between local (7-digit) calling and "long-distance, but within the same area code," where you had to dial 1+7 digits. This was not necessarily even for "large swaths of rural territory." This was in the Philadelphia area (I lived in the city), when there were maybe 4 or 5 area codes for the state. So the 215 area code covered areas outside the city, but not a huge amount of rural territory.

 

[Gumby]

...
when my grandparents moved to rural SE Missouri in 1959 they had a 7-digit number on a party line. I think their ring was 2-longs. the party line disappeared a few years later.

My grandmother, with whom I occasionally lived, had a party line well into the 1960s, probably even the 1970s (in rural southeastern Ohio). If you wanted to call out, you needed to wait until the line was free. You also spoke in a certain code on the phone because the neighbors were probably listening (even though they shouldn't have been). Our ring was two longs and two shorts.

I also recall that long distance calls required the assistance of an operator and were very expensive, so you spoke as fast as you could.

 

[homestead]

My daughter just installed a rotary dial wall phone in her kitchen for use by her pre-teen daughter instead of giving her a cell phone.

 

[rk911]

But is the one in your contact list in the same Area Code as your phone? I assume a mobile phone will assume (that's a lot of assumptions!) the number is the same Area Code if not provided.

I'm no sure how it could "find a match" from a phone number to an outside Area Code. We have Area Codes so that those numbers can be reused. A 7 digit phone number has a "one to many" relationship. Many 'matches'.

-ERD50

sorry. finding a "match" refered to a match in my phone's contact list.

 

[ERD50]

sorry. finding a "match" refered to a match in my phone's contact list.

Oh, so you had the full 10 digit # in the contact list? Still interesting that it would decide that that must be the same number. But I guess if you really wanted to call a different Area Code and that same 7 digits (what are the odds?), you'd be entering that Area Code and it would not match the contact list.

Reminds me when I was setting up MIL's VOIP phone dialing rules so she could dial within the exchange with just 4 digits - I was warned that it would not work if any of her friends had 4 digit numbers that started with 911x or 411x or any other special use number, because those have preference over the other rules (for good reason).

-ERD50

 

[kcowan]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I just recalled that when I was a boy living in Hawaii, we originally only had 6 digits in our telephone number. They must have run out of numbers, because shortly before we moved back to the Mainland in 1970 they added another digit.

Yes we had a trick that we could dial the last three digits to connect to local numbers in our 6-digit exchange. Then came 7 diigits for a long time before 10 digits and finally an overlay area code. The 10 digit code had all sorts of rules for what was long distance. That overlay was for cell phones initially and they avoided all the funny rules.