Posted by Dave on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 12:45PM :
In Reply to: "Chris in Bagdad", and others: (OT) posted by arthur p bloom on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 9:51AM :
In days of old, you would call the operator and ask for PEnnsylvania6-5000 as Glenn Miller did in 1939 (way before my time). Or in my case AXe3-3464. It doesn't matter if its a rotary phone, touchtone, or cellphone as they all have letters associated with them. Basically the letters are the first two numbers. Eventually as more people got telephones, they replaced the exchange with area codes and went to mandatory 7 or 10 digit numbers.