Remembering local telephone exchanges
Q: I remember some of the telephone exchange names from years ago: “Howard” in Niagara-on-the-Lake, “Webster” and “Mutual” in St. Catharines. Now that I live in Welland, I wonder what the names were here.
A: The Niagara region had several telephone exchange names in use back in the 1940s and 1950s.
Search Engine turned to St. Catharines historian Brian Narhi for an explanation of the system and the local names.
Narhi wrote that a telephone exchange is a phone system located at a central service office responsible for serving a small geographic area. It provided the switching or interconnection of two or more individual subscriber lines for calls made between them — instead of requiring direct lines between subscriber stations.
“This made it possible for subscribers to call each other at homes, businesses or public spaces,” he wrote. “These made telephony an available and comfortable communication tool for everyday use.”
Narhi said each central office served a maximum of 10,000 subscriber lines based upon the last four digits of the telephone number. If an area had more than 10,000 subscribers, it would be served by more central offices.
The central offices were identified by unique names that distinguished them from each other. The first letters of the office names were used as the leading components of the telephone numbers in their areas. The letters were mapped to digits which were visible on the dial and later on touchtone phones.
In the 1940s, Narhi said Bell developed a North American numbering plan which had a system of 86 area codes. Canadian telephone numbers originally consisted of two letters and four numbers,
but during the 1940s that changed to two letters and five numbers. The system was standard in the 1950s.
When a caller lifted the telephone receiver, an operator would ask “Number please?”
Of course, some letters sound like others and that could cause some confusion.
In 1955, AT&T came up with a list of recommended exchange names that were the result of studies to minimize misunderstandings when people spoke them.
The names were supposed to be easily identified when pronounced.
In Welland, for instance, the exchange name was REgent. The RE corresponded with 73 on the telephone. The “gent” part made it easy for the operator to understand what was being said.
Other exchange names in the region, which Narhi found in a 1958 Bell telephone book, were LOgan for Beamsville and Vineland; COlfax and ELgin for Stamford and Niagara Falls; HOward for Niagara-on-the-Lake; TEmple for Port Colborne; DUdley for Port Robinson and TWining for Ridgeville.
CAnal, MUtual and WEbster were used for parts of St. Catharines, Merritton, Thorold and Port Dalhousie and WEbster was used for Grantham and Port Weller. MUtual was also used in Louth.
As more and more people adopted the telephone system, Bell decided to get rid of letter and implement all-number calling. It was phased in starting in 1958, starting in the Niagara area, and was adopted in most areas by the mid1960s.
Send your queries to Karena Walter by email at kwalter@postmedia.com; by Twitter @karena_ standard or through Facebook at www.facebook.com/karenawalter