555 was an exchange combination that was not used very often in the American telephone system. You may get a wrong number, or no number at all. Narrator: An FCC contractor called the NANPA ...

Before that, three letters and four numbers were used. The phone exchange was prior to area codes and prefixes. The exchange names did more than provide a phone number. They identified the area of ...

The change didn’t happen without some resistance, however. People loved the literary charm of their old telephone exchange names, and groups like the Anti-Digit Dialing League and the Committee ...

When Bell System executives grandly announced that all telephone exchange names would soon be replaced by seven-digit numbers in the name of progress (TIME, May 11), they presupposed the blind ...

I'm referring, of course, to the old Toronto telephone exchange names, and if you're over 50, you probably remember yours. I was born eight years after Bell Canada announced it would gradually ...

How many of these old Staten Island telephone exchange names do you remember? Take a look below. GIbraltar was probably the biggest exchange, covering many North Shore homes and businesses.

Mr. Adams’s telephone numbers are listed as STEWART ... courtesy of Living History of Illinois.) Even though exchange names have disappeared, they still live on in the numbers that replaced ...

This particular phone goes back further than I do as it has retained its yellowed piece of paper at the center of the rotary that has its old exchange name and number: MElrose 1-1254. Beneath that ...

The exchange names began being phased out around 1967. Johanna Weidenmueller, later Johanna Luther, was among the first telephone operators when the company first began in 1890. In a 1938 ...