telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) (01/29/89)
In the message just before this, John Higdon disputes a comment by another user regards the beginning of DDD (Direct Distance Dialing). He is partly correct, and partly wrong. Like all major improvements to the telephone, DDD was phased in across North America over several years, beginning, as Mr. Higdon points out, in the early 1950's. Area codes and prefixes were assigned everywhere -- even in communities which still had all manual service -- in the late forties, or by 1950 at the latest. Area codes and prefixes were used by rate/route/billing operators long before anyone could actually punch the corresponding buttons to place the call. A good telecom trivia question might be which community was the first to be able to place/receive DDD calls? Higdon is probably correct it was in 1951 or thereabouts; although I am not sure *who* they could dial until at least a few other communities were 'on-line'. During the early to middle fifties, there were some communities 'advanced enough' to have DDD available to them while other communities were still operating a manual exchange. The 'most advanced' DDD-equipped exchanges still had to use operator intervention to call manual systems or other dial systems not yet brought into the DDD program. Then there were communities which had dial service, but the numbering was not standardized. Fort Wayne, IN and La Fayette, IN were two example which come to mind. Typically, it was some GTE operating company whose numbering scheme was out of synch with AT&T's idea of how things were to be numbered. Northern Indiana has been 219 since the beginning; and central Indiana has always been 317; yet until around 1970 or so, long after we here in Chicago could direct dial 90 percent of North America, to place a call to Lafayette we still dialled "211" and passed the request to the operator. She likewise dialed nothing, but instead, plugged into a circuit and waited patiently until someone at the other end screamed "Lafayette!" at her. And Lafayette had local seven digit dialing at that...but no DDD because the local telco there resisted changing the way things were done. Lafayette's telco had a special arrangement with Purdue University: Purdue had automatic dialing on their campus before the town of Lafayette had dial service. In those days you just lifted the receiver and asked for Purdue. From a Purdue extension, dialing "9" brought a click, and silence until a Lafayette operator answered to place the local call, etc. Once Lafayette went dial, seven digit numbers were used with one exception: To reach Purdue you dialed "90" to reach the Purdue operators, or "92" plus the desired five digit extension on campus. Due to local politics, Lafayette would not change Purdue's main number from "90" to a more conventional seven digit number. Until they *did*, they could not have DDD and expect to reach Escanaba, MI or Memphis, TN or anywhere in Alaska with the same ease they reached the Student Union Building. Finally they came around, as did Fort Wayne and a lot of other cities who had all sorts of albiet convenient, but out of synch dialing routines. By the middle 1960's more and more telephone subscribers were able to DDD with fewer and few exceptions. When the original message writer said "...before 1960 you placed your calls with the long distance operator..." he may have been right in the context of *his* telephone exchange. Remember, Richmond, IN and Crown Point, IN went dial for the first time only in 1963. While Chicago started converting to dial in 1939, the job was not complete until 1951 in the city proper, and not until *1960* if you count all the suburbs. We dialed "711" to get northern Indiana suburbs still on manual service (getting an operator in Whiting who finished the job), and "911" to get an operator in the northern suburbs for communities like Fox Lake, IL which finally cut to dial in the early 60's. I guess saying that '...we had area codes and DDD in 1951...' depends entirely on what telco you were on. The first references to it in the Chicago phone book were 1956; and then in a limited way. An area code map was printed, but with the notation that not every place listed could be dialed direct at that time. I think it is safe to say by the middle sixties DDD was pretty much a part of American telephony. With the exception of Nevada toll stations, of course, and the one place in Maine which kept its old fashioned service for a few more years. Patrick Townson
johnl@ima.ISC.COM (01/30/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0035m05@vector.UUCP> telecom@bu-cs.BU.EDU (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >I think it is safe to say by the middle sixties DDD was pretty much a part >of American telephony. With the exception of Nevada toll stations, of >course, and the one place in Maine which kept its old fashioned service >for a few more years. I thought that Catalina Island, offshore near Los Angeles, had a manual exchange until about 1978. It was reputed to be the Bell System's last manual exchange. Regards, John Levine, johnl@ima.isc.com [Moderator's Note: I don't know when Avalon, CA (the town on the island) went dial. Was it as late as 1978? What about Martha's Vineyard, MA and Nantucket Island, MA? I know Vineyard Haven and Edgartown had manual service until sometime around the early seventies. PT]
jbn@glacier.stanford.edu (John B. Nagle) (01/31/89)
As many telecom readers probably know, area codes and direct dialing
were originally implemented so that the originating toll operator could set up
the call and have it routed automatically, rather than manually dealing with
distant toll boards to set up the circuit. But Direct Distance Dialing was
only offered to subscribers after AT&T Long Lines had most of its system
automated. Thus, when DDD did appear in a locality, one could generally
call most places in the Bell System immediately.
The accounting system for DDD originally involved paper tape punches
(the "Automatic Accountant"), a very special purpose electronic calculator
that took in the paper tape, computed the toll, and punched a standard
IBM card, and large farms of IBM tabulating equipment to sort the cards and
generate the customer bills.
John Nagle