Neil, named exchanges in the UK were phased out in the 60s - I remember when we had to learn a whole new number. Very frustrating.

We were PIN for Pinner.

I just had the most nostalgic memory flash. When I was in elementary school and my grandparents lived in Chicago,I'd call them and the number we gave the operator was Midway..whatever. I haven't thought of that since I was 11 years old.

In 1948 we had a Fairfax number, and were on a 2- party-line. I'd forgotten all about that. You knew if the incoming call was for you if it rang long (or short...I forget). But there was no way to tell if the phone was in use. You just quickly hung up if you heard someone on-line. I think private lines were available a year or so later ...probably a good thing for good neighborly relations as I remember spending lots of time on-line. I'd pull the hall phone into my bedroom and close the door. Later we had a kitchen wall-phone.. .I think it was yellow, but that might have been a later phone. When were colored phones first available? josh

We were Broadway.
I remember party lines, there were no secrets back then.

We were BAily and I do remember those two party lines, some people tried to listen in or just kept cutting in to get you to hang up. Was trying to tell my always connected daughter about it this weekend and she really looked at me like "Wow, are you old" lol...of course that was after I took a swim in the pool with my cell phone in my pocket. Didn't bother me in the least, but she already has a new phone on order for me.

Oh, I love those Looks. I get them whenever we are driving along an 8-lane divided highway, and I wistfully murmur, "I remember when this was a gravel road..."

One of my early jobs was working for the phone company as a Long Distance Operator... yes, that was *before* folks could dial LD with an area code. To this day I remember most, if not all, of the USA area codes in use then; the local exchanges for DC and the northern third of Virginia haven't stuck so firmly.

Colored phones started to become common in the late 1950's. Remember the "Princess Phone"? Recently, DH gave me one as a gift. Laughing his head off because it is now considered to be an antique.

Ohgoodgrief. I had an ericafon and it's hard to even consider that being vintage, with its space-age design. I remember when all the phones were owned by the phone company and one simply "leased" them with the line. My mother is still on the ringer system with her old rotary dial phones, instead of the touch tone and this presents a problem sometimes when automated systems don't give an option for holding for an operator.

I was thinking the other day about my son who is always on the cutting edge of any new technology. He had one of the first models of car mobile phones available to the general public. It was an enormous unit and his car was promptly broken into and it was history. I suspect communications are the one area I associate with the most change in my lifetime.

I remember my aunt's old private number, since I was a child when I had to use it and it wasn't listed. It's etched on my brain like a cattle brand. Her prefix was Gladstone and I still recite the GL and five numbers.

Yes, I remember party lines and actually had one for awhile in the mid seventies until a private line became available. Back in Missouri when I was first married, that's all we ever had. ONe had to have a modicum of courtesy to share telephone lines, and more than one person would cry wolf, and say it was an emergency and ask you to clear the line just out of convenience. There was even a warning in the phone book against that.

We first had a four digit number. After WWII the phone system really grew. At first it was a 2 or 3 followed by the old four digit number. Then the system grew some more and Exchanges came into being. ADams and ELgin plus the 2 or 3 plus the four digit number were the first.

What a struggle!! Having to remember seven numbers instead of a word plus five numbers.

Izzat any worse than the nine digit zip code?

LOL! When I asked SH for his parents' phone number the other day, he told me INdependence2-4587! I said what were the numbers & he said"How would I know?"

Our exchange was Euclid & my best friends was Village. When I first moved to St. Louis we were Forest, but then the numbers took over. And now we have to dial 10 digits when we make a phone call - even locally.

Many of the desks in our high school were etched with the words, "Hasbrook Stonies rule!!" And I think I remember that only because HAsbrook, like CLearbrook, were telephone exchanges that I couldn't figure out what they might be named after, because I didn't know them to be streets, neighborhoods or bodies of water. The system was fading away by the time I was making phone calls, and I at first found it kind of mystifying when adults would refer to a phone number as Clearbrook 5 555 or whatever.