Hello me. This is a place for me to investigate into all the nuances of my life, the history of them. Or at least that's a launching point. I don't expect to ever make this a public blog, this is just a place to put all the little history research projects I do.
For example, a poster on TBLA got me thinking today about phone numbers. I have a cell phone now, but that number is largely meaningless to me, in that it's not grounded in a place. The number I've known for as long as I can remember is the land line at my parent's house in Carson.
(310)834-xxxx
I've always known those numbers meant something, but I never really dove into it until today. The 310 means the Santa Monica Bay area code. I'll look more into that later. What I want to focus on is the 834 part. I learned today that 83 corresponds to two different areas in LA County. VErmont ave in Culver City, and TErminal island down in the South Bay. So the 83 refers to a telephone exchange in San Pedro.
The old San Pedro exchange was built by Southern California Telephone Company, to provide Harbor Area service. Carson being an unincorporated area north of Wilmington (Port Town) at the time, this makes sense. The building today has SBC signage, and I guess probably AT&T now. TErminal had exchanged 1,2 and 3. The four must have been a digital exchange added later.
I assume SCTC was bought by Pac Bell, which was bought by SBC, which merged with AT&T. Now to look into area codes.
Update:
I overlooked something. My house was never served by the San Pedro Exchange. Carson lies between Compton and San Pedro. In the 1940s SCTC built an exchange in Wilmington to relieve San Pedo from Wilmington and South Carson. They took up the TErminal exchanges 0,4 and 5! So 834 refers to the Wilmington exchange, not San Pedro. Wilmington also took over some exchanges from Compton as North Carson was populated in the late 1950s, the SPruce 5 lines (775).
It's weird, I actually live in an older house than my Grandparents do, which you don't expect. Their Harbor City number doesn't seem to correspond to anything, nor does my cousin in Hawthorne.
So, you know that the older exchanges originally derived from names. You mention both VErmont and TErminal Island for the initial 83.
ReplyDeleteWay back when, in big cities, there were only 6 “digits” in all, not 7 as now. (In smaller places, there could be far fewer, like 3 or 4 in all. It wasn’t regularized. Until fairly recently, that system still pertained in smaller towns and villages in the UK, by the way.) So my family’s phone number, I dimly recall, in Montreal was HUnter 7870. Then it became HUnter 8-7870. Shortly thereafter, the number of phone numbers available greatly increased by adding other numbers to HUnter: HU 6, HU 7, etc.
You can probably establish a hierarchy of “ancient” phone numbers that remained the same, as their original 6 digits, with the insertion only of a new (3rd) digit after the exchange name vs. brash new numbers that never had a 6-digit incarnation. This predates hierarchies based on those retaining their original area codes, etc. I think that when I was first conscious, we didn’t have an area code at all in Montreal, that the 514 came in around the same time, or later than, the 7-digit phone numbers as the regularization of the system took hold over North America.
going off what I read today and from what Dave said initially, I feel safe saying between 1945-1965 LA County PacBell started switching to 7 digits, since Dave can remember when 224 was added to the exist 221, 222, 223, and 225. The 83 down here had at least 831, 832, and 833. I’m guessing xx1 are probably the oldest numbers, that third digit getting larger indicating newer numbers
ReplyDeleteBut I'm gonna look more into this