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Telephone numbers listed in 1920 in New York City having three-letter exchange prefixes. In the United States, the most-populous cities, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, initially implemented dial service with telephone numbers consisting of three letters and four digits (3L-4N) according to a system developed by W. G. Blauvelt of AT&T in 1917. [1]
Telephone dial number card of c.1948 with the local telephone number 4-5876 in Atlantic City, NJ, using the central office prefix 4, later converted to AT4 Face of a 1939 rotary telephone dial with the telephone number LA-2697, which includes the first two letters of Lakewood, New Jersey, as the central office prefix, later converted to LA6.
These letter assignments have been used for multiple purposes. Originally, they referred to the leading letters of telephone exchange names. In the mid-20th century United States, before the switch to All-Number Calling, telephone numbers had seven digits, including a two-digit prefix which was expressed in letters rather than digits, e.g.; KL5 ...
The 'core' code of 0803 was allocated to a five-figure linked numbering scheme covering exchanges in Torquay (numbers starting with 2, 3 and 6) and Paignton (numbers starting with 4 or 5). 0804 was then introduced to cover a ring of 13 smaller satellite exchanges outside Torbay [12] with subscriber numbers starting at 2xx or 2xxx on each exchange.
In the UK, letters were assigned to numbers in a similar fashion to North America, except that the letter O was allocated to the digit 0 (zero); digit 6 had only M and N. The letter Q was later added to the zero position on British dials, in anticipation of direct international dialing to Paris, which commenced in 1963.
The Australian letter-to-number mapping was A=1, B=2, F=3, J=4, L=5, M=6, U=7, W=8, X=9, Y=0, so the phone number BX 3701 was in fact 29 3701. When Australia around 1960 changed to all-numeric telephone dials, a mnemonic to help people associate letters with numbers was the sentence, "All Big Fish Jump Like Mad Under Water eXcept Yabbies."
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The main advantages of phonewords over standard phone numbers include increased memorability and increased response rates to advertising. They are easier to remember than numeric phone numbers; thus, when businesses use them as a direct response tool in their advertising (radio, television, print, outdoor, etc.), their memorability tends to have a favorable effect on response rates.