Bits and Bytes OnLine: Mayor dials the first long-distance telephone call

Friday, September 30, 2022

Mayor dials the first long-distance telephone call

On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was awarded U.S. Patent 174,465, titled “Improvement In Telegraphy,” for his telephone invention.

He co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) March 3, 1885.

One hundred years ago, a long-distance telephone call could take many minutes to set up before both parties could speak.

Then, long-distance operators in each city the call passed through needed to patch cords into their telephone switchboards to complete an electrical circuit for the speech path so the originating calling party could converse with the called party.

Operators also recorded by hand on paper the date and time of each telephone call to bill customers.

In 1947, AT&T developed the North American Numbering Plan (NANP).

The original NANP included 86 three-digit geographic codes (area codes) designed to speed the completion of direct-dialed calls placed by long-distance telephone switchboard operators for the subscribers of the country’s telephone companies.

The NANP initially divided Minnesota into two numbering plan areas, 612 and 218.

During the mid to late 1940s, AT&T installed new relay-logic telephone toll (long-distance) switching offices for its Long Lines Department, which connected the regional Bell companies and independent telephone companies.

These toll switching offices were capable of processing prefixed area codes of long-distance calls placed by switchboard operators.

Toll switching offices dramatically lowered the time needed to connect telephone calls placed by switchboard operators for telephone company subscribers who were not yet able to dial long-distance calls.

On Nov. 10, 1951, a telephone company subscriber dialed the first long-distance call.

Mayor Melvin Leslie Denning of Englewood, NJ, a city with a population of 25,000, was the first to dial a coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call without the assistance of a switchboard operator.

Denning’s call was to Alameda, CA.

Sitting at a desk surrounded by dignitaries inside the New Jersey Bell Telephone Company, an AT&T subsidiary, Mayor Denning dialed a three-digit area code (415) and a seven-digit telephone number on a rotary phone.

Within 18 seconds, the telephone on the desk of Mayor Frank Osborne of Alameda, CA, was ringing.

“The world shrinks so that soon there won’t be enough room for the people,” Mayor Osborne jokingly said on the telephone to Mayor Denning.

The direct-dialed call to Alameda was processed using a No. 5 Crossbar relay-logic dial telephone switching system manufactured by Western Electric, which AT&T owns.

Bell Telephone Laboratories, also owned by AT&T (yes, at that time, AT&T pretty much owned the telephone industry), designed the No. 5 Crossbar to accept and process additional digits dialed by telephone company subscribers.

The New Jersey Bell telephone customers in Englewood with one and two-party service could dial long-distance directly to 11 million telephones located in 13 area codes around the country without operator assistance.

Telephone switching equipment for processing long-distance calls dialed by telephone company subscribers (advertised as Direct Distance Dialing) began being installed in cities across the country.

Telephone companies also installed automatic message accounting (AMA) computing systems to track and store long-distance calling records used to create the billing statements mailed to subscribers.

Since telephones in 1947 used rotary dials, NANP considered the number of “dial pulls” used for an area code to reduce the time required for a rotary dial on a telephone to out pulse a digit.

NANP initially assigned area codes with minimum rotary dial pulls to highly populated regions; therefore, New York City and Los Angeles used area codes 212 and 213.

New Jersey, home of Bell Telephone Laboratories, was assigned the first area code, 201.

The telephone numbering plan format NXX-NXX-XXXX is where N is any digit from 2 through 9 and X is any digit from 0 through 9.

Today, the North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA) oversees telephone numbers consisting of a three-digit numbering plan area (area code), followed by a three-digit telephone office prefix code.

The local telephone company provider assigns the last four digits (line number), completing the ten-digit telephone numbering plan.

The NANPA manages the area and office prefix code assignments for 20 North American countries and territories.

As of 2022, Minnesota area codes are 218, 320, 507, 612, 651, 763, and 952.

I recently learned that NANPA anticipates before 2025, area code 507 could be split into two geographic regions with a second area code added.

Presently, there are 335 assigned area codes, 317 within the continental U.S., and 18 area codes outside of the U.S.

There are enough unused area codes to last until sometime after 2039, according to the director of the NANPA.

Direct Distance Dialing arrived in Minnesota on Aug. 18, 1957, when Northwestern Bell Telephone Company’s one and two-party line subscribers began making long-distance calls within the state and nationwide.

In 1960, the Winsted Telephone Company installed a Leich (pronounced “like”) relay-logic electromechanical telephone switching system. Shortly after, one and two-party line subscribers could direct-dial long-distance telephone calls without operator assistance.

“The Nation at Your Fingertips,” is a 1951 video preserved by the Library of Congress. It tells the story of Englewood, NJ, a brief history of using the telephone, switchboard operators, and the equipment used to provide long-distance dialing. You can watch it at https://bit.ly/3Sg6rhr.