“things like “Klondike 558”
Yes, they should have explained that a bit better.
Back in the day, the “exchange” part of the phone number was a word.
I think it started with just the word, or actually the first 2 letters of the word, and then the actual number, which I think at the very beginning was probably more like an extension. I mean, remember “party lines”? Where a bunch of houses would share one actual line and if your neighbors were talking, you couldn’t be.
I actually visited with some friends in their upstate NY summer house which as late as the early 90s still had a party line.
Soon enough when they needed more numbers they added a third number to the exchange part.
I think KLondike was a real exchange, at least in NYC so it would make sense it would have gotten used for TV stuff since so much early TV was shot in NY.
Mine was ORegon. OR7-xxxx.
The most famous one of these is probably BUtterfield 8 from the melodramatic Liz Taylor movie of the 1960s.
I remember my brother telling me that my parents were very upset they had to give up some classy exchange at one point, when they moved, but I can’t remember what that was. ORegon was low rent, for some reason!
Others I can remember are:
JUdson
GRamercy (AH! that was probably the one they lost out on. I knew a lot of kids with that exchange, we were in the Gramercy Park neighborhood, dontcha know)
HUdson
It was kind of cool and then it was just gone.
Oh well, now we have cool internet nicknames like “jocon307” and “an american in turkiye”, so we’ll have to be happy with those....for now!
It did, my grandparents phone # in Detroit in the '50's was TUxedo 5-2303
Where I grew up in northern Michigan, we only had to dial 4 numbers for local calls.....