Here is another piece, this one on 'recommended' exchange names.
From: snipped-for-privacy@netdepot.com (Ken Elgart) Subject: Re: Recommended "EXchange" Names Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 09:23:31 -0400
As a follow-up to your post of the list of recommended exchange names (which I tried in vain to track down while I was employed at Western Electric) I thought I'd add some observations from that job and from my student days at the University of Buffalo. When I lived in Buffalo the area had 2L-4N dialing and my phone number (PArkside 6755) was dialed PA (72)-6755 but residents of Rochester which had DDD To Buffalo (and, I suspect, long distance operators) were instructed to dial the first *3* letters of the exchange name, thus to reach me they would dial PAR (727)-6755.
While at WE I looked up, as a matter of curiosity, the office drawings of the last manual CO to convert to dial in New York City where I grew up. When the CIty Island 8 central office was converted the new exchange was ordered and installed as the TUlip 5 exchange but between installation and cutover New York Telephone decided to switch from exchange names to arbitrary 2-Letter combinations and it appeared in the new telephone directory as TT 5 which is dialed exactly the same as TUlip 5. The dial conversion could in fact have been done without changing the exchange name as people elsewhere in New York City had been dialing CIty Island 8 for years, reaching a call indicator in front of the inward operator at CIty Island 8 who completed the call without their being aware that an operator was involved in the call.
From ptowns> Please note that the 55x, 57x, 95x and 97x ranges are not included. In
Sure. W and K are two of the radio callsign series assigned to the USA, the others being AA-AL and N. Those last two were almost exclusively military or government until the last 20 years or so.
Peter "stuck in prefix 579" Laws