Bill Ranck responds:

This is one of those "old time" things I can't really
relate to. Growing up in New Jersey, the home of
Bell Labs, our phone system got all the latest and
greatest stuff early on. I remember "Direct Distance
Dialling" in the early 60's. We could dial our own
long distance, even overseas, without any operator
intervention or even dialling a "1" first. To the
best of my knowlege, you still don't dial a "1" for
long distance in New Jersey. Maybe that's changed. We got
"TouchTone" a few months after I saw it at the New York
Worlds Fair in 1964. I never even heard of 4-digit
dialling until I was an adult, and then it was in
an historical context. I had heard of, but not
experienced, a party line until I moved to Virginia
in the late 1970's. After 25+ years I've finally
gotten used to the "1" for long distance.

Yeah, my mother used to have the no "1" dial in Dobbs Ferry, NY many years ago.
I stayed with her for a month (only seemed like 6 years to both of us) when my
first marriage broke up, so I found that out quickly. Same in an earlier
apartment she had in Yonkers. I got used to that quickly, then moved to
Bedford, VA where you needed the 1 and could still use 4 digits to get the
neighbor up the road. Hell, it's faster to walk up and talk to him than to dial
him in these days of "mod cons."

Another historical context: when I was living in Albany, NY, and later the same
year ('72) in Milton, WI, I could sequence dial by calling the operator, giving
her the list of numbers I needed, then each time I finished a call, she dialed
the next one for me. Great feature when you needed 10-15 calls in a row, and
jog dials don't replace it.

Course, that was back in the days before I took diuretics to keep the blood
pressure down.

Charlie Self
"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."
Dorothy Parker

http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html