So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[2jakes]

Meet Unsinkable Sam: The Cat that Survived Three Ships ...

 

[LizzieMaine]

And then there's Minnie, a blue-collar, working class cat who punched the clock for thirteen years at the Esso refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey.

 

[2jakes]

One of the first “super stars”...before Mickey !

History of Felix The Cat

 

[HudsonHawk]

And then there's Minnie, a blue-collar, working class cat who punched the clock for thirteen years at the Esso refinery in Bayonne, New Jersey.

This has nothing to do with cats or anything else, for that matter, but scanning around that paper is interesting. Perhaps the best part is the classified, where you learn you can call the local drug store...their phone number? 54.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Before dial came in, our gas station's phone number was "9."

 

[HudsonHawk]

Before dial came in, our gas station's phone number was "9."

I know we've talked about phone service many times, but the "smallest" I remember in my lifetime is 4-digit dialing.

 

[Fading Fast]

I know we've talked about phone service many times, but the "smallest" I remember in my lifetime is 4-digit dialing.

"9," "4-digit dialing," even in old movies (not that I've seen them all, so maybe I'm completely wrong), it seems five or six was the lowest number once people stopped ringing the operator to put a call through. Do you mean "9" was the number when the operator was still placing calls? I'm just trying to understand? It would make sense, early on, that a local phone company would have started at "1" and worked up, but your station got "9" - wow.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Manual exchanges in small towns very often had one, two, or three digit numbers -- "9" was the entire number for our gas station until dial service was installed in town in 1957. (The neighboring city, where my mother worked as an operator, didn't go dial until 1965.)

My grandparents' number during these same years was 134-2. That wasn't One-three-four-two, though. They were on a party line, so you'd give the number to the operator as "One three four ring two." The number after the hyphen denoted the number of rings for each station on that particular line, and each digit of the ring number indicated a sequence of rings. So if the number was 135-23, it'd be "one three five ring two three," and the ring would be repeated bursts of RING RING -- RING RING RING.

The Bell System began with several patterns of numbers for dial service -- two letter-four digit numbers were the most common, followed by three letter-four digit. They began to implement a plan to standardize at two letters-five numbers in the early thirties, but it took over thirty years to complete this process, by which time "All Number Calling" was being rolled out in selected areas.

Around here, the first town to get dial service used four digit numbers only -- the exchange was not dialed, and you had to use the operator for any call outside that exchange. There were also suffix letters for party line phones -- J, M, R, and W. So your number might be "Camden 2110-W" and would be dialed as 2110-W, disregarding "Camden" altogether. Phones for such exchanges used a special dial plate with no exchange letters shown, but the party line letters indicated:

Note that the party line letters occur at the same dial positions as they do on the standard "metropolitan" dial.

The dial system in my hometown, installed in 1957, used 2L-5N (KIngswood 8) at first, and then switched to ANC (548), but you only ever had to dial the last four digits of the number if you lived in-town. Even though the phone book specifically said you had to dial the last five digits (8-####). This lasted until they cut over to a touch-tone-enabled line in the early '90s.

Where I live now, it was five digits once dial came in, and remained so until the late eighties.

 

[2jakes]

My earliest recollection was phone numbers with letters.

This was the phone number for a very famous comedy couple in TV land during the ‘50s.

These telephone exchanges could only facilitate around 10,000 subscribers, many large cities had multiple hubs.
The Ricardo’s MUrray Hill5-9975 meant their number was 685-9975 ( “Hill and it’s capital H served as a
mnemonic), with the 68, or “MU”, representing the East Side of Manhattan’s telephone exchange.
Why Did Old Phone Numbers Start With Letters? | Mental ...

 

[swanson_eyes]

When was 911 introduced as the emergency #?

 

[2jakes]

^^^
dial 411 for assistance.

 

[swanson_eyes]

 

[DNO]

Meet Unsinkable Sam: The Cat that Survived Three Ships ...

Sam's story is interesting....but that photo is Simon the cat from HMS Amethyst. Note the tag on his neck.

 

[2jakes]

Sam's story is interesting....but that photo is Simon the cat from HMS Amethyst. Note the tag on his neck.

Actually the black & white cat was named Oscar. That’s according to ZME Science.

I previously posted the link in case you need to inform them of the error.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That cat looks like my Carol, except not so fat.

I don't remember any designated emergency number around here when I was growing up -- you just dialed the operator if you didn't know the number for the police or fire department. 911 came into use very gradually over a span of about twenty years starting in the late sixties, but we didn't have it here until the early '90s.

 

[2jakes]

tiny trivia:

Half-full gift stamp books!

 

[HudsonHawk]

"9," "4-digit dialing," even in old movies (not that I've seen them all, so maybe I'm completely wrong), it seems five or six was the lowest number once people stopped ringing the operator to put a call through. Do you mean "9" was the number when the operator was still placing calls? I'm just trying to understand? It would make sense, early on, that a local phone company would have started at "1" and worked up, but your station got "9" - wow.

Lizzie explains it better, but 4-digit dialing meant you only had to dial four numbers because everything that wasn't long distance was in the same exchange. You were still 555-1234, but for local calls you only had to dial the 1-2-3-4. Anything outside that exchange was long distance and you had to dial eleven digits including the area code, like 1-212-555-6789 or whatever. I remember it up into the 1980s.

 

[Zombie_61]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_Sam

If I'd been a crew member on the HMS Ark Royal I think my response would have been, "Get that cat off of this boat. He's bad luck."

One of the first “super stars”...before Mickey !

History of Felix The Cat

I'd suggest people seek out the earlier Felix cartoons. The ones produced by Trans-Lux were rubbish by comparison.

 

[HudsonHawk]

When was 911 introduced as the emergency #?

911 was first introduced as an emergency number in 1968, but many municipalities took a long time to adopt it. We never had it growing up, and the first I remember it where I lived was around 1990. It may have been available earlier, but it wasn't commonly known. If you had an emergency, you dialed the operator and asked for the police, fire department, ambulance etc.

 

[2jakes]

If I'd been a crew member on the HMS Ark Royal I think my response would have been, "Get that cat off of this boat. He's bad luck."


I'd suggest people seek out the earlier Felix cartoons. The ones produced by Trans-Lux were rubbish by comparison.

For early Armstrong & Calloway spiced with gritty surreal settings, you can’t beat
1930s Max Fleischer toons.