Thanks to the clipping files at the History Room of the Oakland Public Library, I have been able to pin down the date that San Francisco and Oakland went fully to 2L-5N numbers: August 10, 1947, a Sunday, at 12 midnight.
The Tribune referred to it on Saturday, which would have been August
9, of course, but it also is clear from the context that the switchover activities began on Saturday night. Either the Tribune's style considered the day to begin at 12.01 am, or there was some confusion when the story was edited.An article in the August 7, 1947 Oakland Tribune started out:
When you're enjoying your leisure Sunday, think of the poor telephone workers. They're going to be plenty busy.
For at exactly 12 midnight Saturday [see above for why I believe this was really Sunday], new numbers for some 325,000 telephone subscribers in the Oakland area and San Francisco go into effect, and Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company officials have prepared for trouble.
For months now, a new telephone directory, advertisements, radio announcements, printed pamphlets and various other media of public enlightment have proclaimed the impending change. Even "Bugs Bunny" has been borrowed from Hollywood to do his part in helping the public ease into the change with as few complications as possible. [Unfortunately, there is no further explanation of the role Bugs Bunny played in transition to 2L-5N telephone numbers.]
MANY MIX-UPS
Nevertheless, there will be mix-ups -- and plenty of them. People just don't make a change from anything so established as telphone numbers without a slip along the line somewhere. And, even if they do remember the new numbers the first day, telephone officials are predicting they'll forget the next day or the day after and let habit dictate their dialing.
That's why an unusually large force of operators will be on duty when heavy traffic begins around 6 a.m. Sunday. The "trouble and interceptor" panel at the local office will have a full complement of operators as will the regular local boards through which most of the
3,000,000 daily calls pass.Telephone officials estimate five per cent of these calls, or about
150,000, will be incorrect.RECORD MACHINE
In addition, a gadget known as a "mirrorphone" will be in operation. It's the same record machine that said "No" to you when you tried to use your phone during the recent telephone strike. This time it will volunteer the information that you've dialed the wrong number and "please look in your August 10th directory for the new number."
The change is a step toward the extension of direct dialing to nearby communities and future operator-dialing of long distance calls to distant cities. It will affect cities on this side of the Bay from San Leandro on the south to El Cerrito on the north. [El Cerrito is just south of Richmond.]
In effect, the change consists of adding a numeral, known as an "office numeral", to the familiar prefixes, such as TEmplebar, GLencourt or HIghgate. Thus, TEmplebar 0000 will become TEmplebar
2-0000. The KEllogg [sic], LAkehurst, LAndscape and LOckhaven exchanges have had office numerals for some time and will not be affected.MORE COMBINATIONS
Addition of the numerals increases the possible number combinations on the present dials from 60 to 600. [Does the Tribune mean number combinations of possible exchanges? There's no further explanation of the number.] All the combinations won't be utilized immediately, but they'll be available when dial service is extended in the future. Too, the new numeral will increase dialing time from an average of eight seconds to about 11 seconds.
Technically, the change of numbers is relatively simple, and will be accomplished with nothing more than wire and a soldering iron. Wires will be changed in the "decoder banks," wiring panels which receive the combination you dial, and sets up the correct dial code which feeds back into the right dial exchange in one-fifth of a second. [Huh?]
Wiremen in the various offices will cut on of the decoders in an exchange out of operation when traffic begins to slacken around 10:30 pm Saturday. Between then and midnight, they will rewire that one bank to take care of the new numbers and put it into service when the other decoder banks [are] cut out at midnight. That one bank will be sufficient to handle all calls made during the early hours of the morning while workmen are rewiring the other banks. All the banks will be ready for operation when the heavier traffic begins around 6 am.
[end]=> Now here's the odd thing. Certain exchanges, such as PIedmont, continued to have "J" or "W" suffixes after the phone numbers. These were, of course, the exchanges that had not yet gone to dial service. Here's what the "How to Dial" section of the 1951 directory explained what to do with those numbers:
- Dial the first two letters and the numeral of the central officename, then the remaining figures of the number. If the figures are followed by a letter, such as W, J, R, or M dial this letter also.
In other words, there was, for a time, 2L-5N-1L dialing to some exchanges!
Dialing instructions in the 1949 and 1951 directories indicated that cross-bay calling, e.g. Oakland to San Francisco, could be dialed only from "dial individual line business telephones" (except coin telephones). All others still had to use an operator. Calls within the East Bay were dialed, or required the operator's assistance, or from Berkeley LAndscape to Richmond, required dialing "911". (I referred to this service code in a previous post; in 1948 that code was used for calls to Hayward, but it could be dialed by 1949.)
The change to 2L-5N dialing was announced in January of 1947. A couple of paragraphs in a Tribune story may be of interest:
California has more than 2,635,000 telephones in use, which places it second in the nation for telephone usage ... It has more than 333,000 unfilled telephone orders, also a second place record. In the Metropolitan Oakland zone, 221,907 telephones were in use in 1946, as compared to 167,199 in 1940, and 18,372 unfilled applications still remained at the exchange. [January 9, 1947]
Another Tribune story on January 28, 1947 gave the names of the exchanges affected by the addition of a digit: ANdover (1), AShberry (3), BErkeley (7), GLencourt (1), HIghgate (4), HUmboldt (3), OLympic (2), PIedmont (5), SWeetwood (8), TEmplebar (2), THornwall (3), TRinidad (2), TWinoaks (3), ROchester (7).
Other stories in the clipping file described the conversion of Berkeley's THornwall exchange (THornwall 1 and THornwall 3) to dial service on August 29, 1954, the final conversion in the bayside East Bay, for THornwall 8 (formerly AShberry) on April 19, 1959, and the last conversion in the Bay Area, in Crockett on November 11, 1969.
Alas, there were no clippings regarding the 1965 (or 1964) spinoff of Oakland Hills numbers in the Fruitvale and Main-Piedmont rate centers into their own switch. I ran out of time and didn't have a chance to go through newspaper microfilms. I would assume that there would have been some publicity for it.
Mark Roberts | "A man does not show his greatness by being at one extremity, Oakland, Cal.| but rather by touching both at once." NO HTML MAIL | -- Blaise Pascal