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Comment by rconti | Hacker News Reader

It's so annoying that they only used one example (Murray Hill) which is actually MU and not MH, which required me to re-skim it a few times to grok what was going on.

It would have been nice for the article to provide several examples of the mnemonic.

While I've been aware for quite a few years that the telephone system used to use names for exchanges (eg, Pennsylvania 6-500), it took a few MORE years for me to realize that it mapped to PE6500, or 736500. It's one of those things where, if you understand the system (like my parents did), it's obvious and it doesn't occur to you that you might have to explain the letter-to-number mapping .

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The article linked to the full Ma Bell list: https://web.archive.org/web/20150317062651/http://www.ourweb...

It's strange to me that there are 5-6 options for each exchange, instead of a canonical name.

The article did a really poor job of explaining the logic.

> It's strange to me that there are 5-6 options for each exchange, instead of a canonical name.

The point isn't to assign them canonical names, but to define a mapping from the two letters at the start of a word to two-digit codes. These letter-pairs are chosen so that meaningful words can be formed with them (that's why there is no QX, because no English word starts with QX) and that they are distinguishable (which is why there is a BA but not BE, BO, or BU: it would be hard to distinguish BAldwin from BEldwing, BOldwin or BUldwin).

There isn't a single canonical name because the purpose of the code is to allow cities to define their own area codes with memorable names that vary based on the location. One city might use UNiversity (86), MUseum (68) and CEnter (23).

But using UNiversity or MUseum wouldn't make sense in a different city that doesn't have a local university or a particularly notable museum. But they can still use the same area codes with the mnemonics TOwn Square instead of UNiversity (86), OVerlook instead of MUseum (68), or CEdar Avenue instead of CEnter (23).

> (which is why there is a BA but not BE, BO, or BU: it would be hard to distinguish BAldwin from BEldwing, BOldwin or BUldwin).

But there is a BU, as immortalized in the Oscar-winning Elizabeth Taylor film "Butterfield 8"

My childhood phone number in Brooklyn was a BU (28) number, though even when I was a child (1970s) the use of letter exchanges was basically a holdover of a more or less dead practice. (But the use of letter exchanges in phone numbers persisted for decades after that in New York City in store signs - I think there are still some in use today.) In Brooklyn, BU stood for "BUckminster". I had this idea that this was connected to there being a "Buckingham Road" and a "Westminster Road" in the area I grew up in (Ditmas Park West and environs) but I'm not sure if that was something I or someone I knew made up. I'm sure it had nothing to do with Buckminster Fuller.

Ah, I had forgotten that exchanges are local so the exchange number is not nationally unique.

Fun fact: you can still call Pennsylvania 6-5000 and get the hotel which has closed in the last few years. They used to play The Glenn Miller song when you called them...

Maybe not anymore. The building is being demolished. https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/last-remnants-hotel-pennsy...

New owner claims he's going to keep the old number.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

I called it before I wrote the comment. A few years ago I got the song, just before I wrote my comment I got a recording saying they were closed permanently

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