| Re: When Did 2L-5N Become Required in Los Angeles? |
|---|
> Many small towns required only four- or five-digit dialing locally
> long after the "conversion" took place. By "long," I mean 10 or 15
> years or more.
A friend of mine reported is update NY state town worked like that.
But once they went to ESS it no longer worked.
I wonder if this still applies to sparsely populated places in say
Wyoming and the Dakotas where there is little population growth.
The step-by-step selectors ignored "absorbed" the front end digits if
they were dialed.
I worked for an organization that had Centrex, but apparently under a
step-by-step switch. I noticed all numbers were 3xxx, so I tried
dialing something without the front end "3". That is, for ext 3212 I
dialed only 212. It worked. My co-workers were impressed. Of course,
if the ext was 3371, you still had to dial the leading 3. I don't
recall if there were 39xx or 38xx since 8 and 9 were used for tie lines
and outside lines.
Also, for suburban message unit calls we were ONI -- we had to give
our phone number to an operator. Nobody told me whether I should give
my own extension or the main number (3000) so I gave the main number.
The operator's switchboard was a cord board, a 552 I believe. I
thought Centrex always had consoles.
In the early days of Centrex the operator had to handle transfers. (I
think Centrex II allowed the user to dial it himself). Transfer
requests (flashing) for a directly dialed calls came up to the
operator as an attendant request. Transfer requests for an operator
connected call resulted in the supv signal on the cord pair
automatically flashing until serviced.
Centrex could be supplied under either step by step or crossbar, but
not panel. I didn't think there was step in the city but apparently
there was.