PEnsylvania 6-5000 by Jeff Vorzimmer Dialing DO YOU LONG for the days when telephone numbers had romantic-sounding exchange names such as PLaza, TRafalgar, BUtterfield and YUkon? Those days might be coming back. There's a crusade underfoot to reinstate telephone exchange names as a way to get back in touch with our analog past. "I want to resist the increasing trend towards digitizing our lives," says Robert Crowe. "Exchange names helped foster a sense of place and community." Crowe is the creator of The Telephone Exchange Name Project, a website that not only lets you relive the old days as you scroll through lists of exchange names, but also allows you to choose an exchange name to use with your current phone number. What makes Crowe's task of compiling exchange names so daunting is the simple fact that named exchanges haven't been used in the United States in more than 30 years. Other than in telephone books, which have a very short shelf life, existing documentation of telephone exchanges is scarce. In fact, some readers may not even know what telephone exchanges are. Here's a brief explanation: Back in the dark ages of telephony before 1921 -- in the days when telephones lacked dials -- you had to connect with an operator first in order to place a call. After picking up the receiver and tapping on the switch hook a few times to get the operator's attention, you'd get her on the line and give her the number along with the name of the exchange -- such as Spring 3456 or Pennsylvania 5000. Like area codes do today, an exchange name designated a geographical area -- named after a neighborhood, a major street or an area landmark. Once dials appeared on phones, callers could dispense with the operator by dialing the first three letters of the exchange and then the number. For example, S-P-R for Spring and then 3456, or P-E-N for Pennsylvania, then 5000. In those days, phone numbers were written with capitalized letters as a mnemonic device, such as SPRing 3456 and PENnsylvania 5000. By the 1930s, in order to increase the available numbers for each exchange, large cities dropped the third letter and replaced it with a number. So, numbers such as SPRing 3456 became SPring 7-3456, PENsylvania 5000 became PEnnsylvania 6-5000, and so on. This simple change added 80,000 new numbers to existing exchanges. For forty years, Americans dialed exchanges when making calls, but in the late 1950s, Bell Telephone decided to phase the names out. They felt the names were sometimes confusing or hard to spell. They also feared that Europeans would have difficulty direct-dialing America because European phone dials didn't have letters on them. Bell started eliminating the names in 1960 and actually met with some resistance, despite the fact that they proved people had no trouble remembering seven digits. Apparently, people had developed attachments to the exchange names, which revealed what neighborhood they lived in. In San Francisco, opponents of the elimination of named exchanges went so far as to organize the Anti-Digit-Dialing League. And in Washington, The Committee of Ten Million to Oppose All-Number Calling signed petitions and organized rallies to stop the change. By 1966, Bell gave up trying to force the issue, hoping to just grandfather the change by not assigning exchange names to new numbers. But by then, most cities had already made the change -- although certain exchange names endured into the 1970s in cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia. After exploring the lists of names in The Exchange Name Project, I realized that my current number matched the old Coney Island exchange, "ESplanade." I thought I'd use it on my business card for that retro look. I began feeling nostalgic for an era I never knew, so I put on a Glenn Miller album -- analog vinyl of course -- and moved the arm to "PEnnsylvania 6-5000," the 1940 song that featured the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania, across the street from Penn Station. This was the number to call to make reservations at the Café Rouge, located in the hotel where Miller and his band often played. Pennsylvania 6-5000 Please Someone told me not too long ago that it was still the number of the Hotel Pennsylvania. So I decided to give it a call -- the old fashioned way. I picked up the phone and dialed "0". "Operator, get me PEnnsylvania 6-5000 in New York City, please." "Excuse me?" "I would like to be connected to the number PEnnsylvania 6-5000 in New York City." Silence. "Operator?" "You would like me to connect you?" "Yes." "To P-E-6-5000 in New York? "Yes, that's right." "You understand there will be an additional charge for an operator-assisted call?" "That's fine," I said (wondering how much.) "Please hold for your party, sir." The number rang and an automated voice announced that I had indeed reached the Hotel Pennsylvania and gave me various menu choices. I turned down my stereo in order to better hear the music playing in the background behind the automated voice. It was "PEnnsylvania 6-5000"! Robert Crowe would be pleased to know that at least operators are backwardly compatible with what he calls the old analog system, although the operator I got seemed old enough to have been working since the 1950s. (And by the way, Operator, it was well worth the additional charge.)