It's not clear why this service is being related to AT&T and the Bell System. It was widely used in independent company offices, too. In the early 1950s the Los Angeles telephone directories were rife with Zenith numbers; that was when there were a great number of different independent companies serving the Los Angeles basin, long before GTE had gobbled up most or all of them.
The instruction you quote specifically says to dial operator and ask for the number, not to try to dial it.
Most states I'm familiar with have a number to reach the highway patrol or other agency. In Oklahoma it's *55 (goes back to the time when states were blackmailed by the feds into setting a 55 mph speed limit). I've seen a number posted on highway signs in Kansas and in the official state map, but I don't remember what the number is. (it's also of the form *000/)
In 1950 and 1951 I had a Enterprise number in Konawa, Oklahoma, for customers in Wewoka, Oklahoma (the county seat) to call my business without having to make a collect call. A collect call was perceived as cheap or unreasonable by many callers who might want to do business with your business, and also was a lot more hassle than just placing a call by number.
Konawa was a community dial office (three- and four-digit numbers) with operator service provided out of Ada, Oklahoma. Wewoka was also its own toll center. Both Ada and Wewoka were common battery manual. All three exchanges were Bell.
Since Ada and Wewoka were different toll centers, a study had to be made to determine whether facilities were adequated to handle the traffic. (Remember, this was only a few years after the end of World War II when there were still a lot of shortages of equipment and facilifies in many places, and not just Bell.)
The study determined that facilities were available, and the service was provided at a monthly fee, which was in addition to the calls. The calls to the called customer at the station-to-station sent-paid rate.
There was no question of "bands" then. The service was provided on a exchange-by-exchange basis, and if you wanted to be able to call you from another exchange, it was another service at the same monthly rate.
The calling customer in Wewoka only had to pick up his phone and when the operator answered "Number, please" give the number as "Enterprise
000." If the operator didn't know the translation, she would refer to her keyshelf bulletin for the terminating number. Having never used the service from Wewoka, I don't know what the customer would have heard, but the operator would have plugged into an Ada trunk (and rung on the trunk if it was not an automatic trunk) and when the inward operator answered ask for "Konawa 234." The Ada operator would have dialed that number (no doubt from a regular dial on her keyshelf) and might or might not have watched the call supervision. The operator might have split her key so the calling customer did not hear this exchange; I don't know on this point.Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If I am not mistaken -- but my memory is getting so awful these days -- 'Enterprise' was the name for Bell System subscribers and 'Zenith' was the name for GTE/other subscribers when used to _originate_ auto-collect calls (although subscribers could and did call any number even if on some other telco.) In other words, a national firm using that service might have both an Enterrise number and a Zenith number, depending on _which_ subscribers (by telco territory) were calling them. PAT]