During a casual glance at a map today my eyes fell upon Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. When I was growing up in Detroit, my grandmother’s telephone was often given as “LUzon-5-1864” (or whatever the digits were; I’m sure my mom remembers). I never knew what it referred to. I also recall that “LOgan” was another common alphabetic prefix (and, admittedly, I might be mixing this up — grandma’s phone number may have been LOgan-something, but LUzon was definitely popular, too).
I got to thinking: what was up with the alphabetical prefixes? I assumed it had something to do with mnemonics, but was it a formal program supported by the phone company or was it just a popular practice amongst its customers?
Wikipedia’s article on the “North American Numbering Plan” confirms that it was a formal program of the phone company to identify different telephone exchanges by name and also provide an easy way for its customers to remember numbers. To me the most interesting part of that is to learn that there once existed a time when the phone company did something to make things easier for customers….
I then happened upon an interesting thread on a Discuss Detroit forum about Detroit-area phone number prefixes. Among other bits of local trivia and nostalgia, I was reminded of a popular 1970’s Detroit TV commercial jingle for Belvedere Construction (“TYler 8-7100. We Do Good Work!”) The page is also chock full of images from old phone books and photos of switchboards and telephone exchanges. It’s a fascinating read.
Finally, there’s the Telephone EXchange Name Project, which contains a database of telephone exchange names from all over the country and a 1955 list of Bell Telephone’s recommended exchange names. For my current number, which starts with “78,” I’d have the options of STate, STerling, STillwell, STory, or SUnset. But, according to the database, if I had lived in New York, I could have also used “SUsquehanna,” which is far better than any of the “official” names.
