2L-5D

Well into my teen years (1960s), if someone asked for my phone number, I would respond, “MUrray 4-3069.” That’s the way phone numbers were designated back in the old days, with a prefix made up of the first two letters of some word and then five numbers, the first a part of the prefix and then the final four the particular phone number. I have no idea what logic there might have been in the assigning of the names and letters, any more than the numbers, all of which were probably random. If you go back into popular culture from the 40s through the 60s you’ll find vestiges of the phone letter prefix: Glenn Miller recorded "PEnnsylvania 6-5000" in the 1940s (it would become Transylvania 6-5000 in a Bugs Bunny cartoon), and The Marvelettes recorded the wonderful "BEechwood 4-5789" in 1962. Elizabeth Taylor won an Academy Award for Best Actress in BUtterfield 8 (a reference to the character’s phone exchange). The Ricardo’s phone number in I Love Lucy was MUrray Hill 5-9975. In the 1973 movie about the late-1950s, American Graffiti, disc jockey Wolfman Jack mentions phone number "DIamond-3132.” The Simpsons TV show occasionally displays the family’s phone number as KLondike 5-#### (the media convention uses the 555 prefix in TV or film, which is not in official use for personal numbers).

This system was known as “2L-5D” – two letters and five digits. Apparently as the number of phones and phone numbers grew, the possible combinations with letters diminished. They just couldn’t come up with a 2L word that began with BC, JK, MN, PQ, QR, RS, etc., so from the 1960s to the 1980s, the shift was made from 2L-5D to the All-Number Calling (ANC) we have today. And then a three-number area code was added to the seven-number number, and a 1 in front of that. All numbers all the time.

I’m not particularly nostalgic. I prefer my 2006 all-wheel drive, air-conditioned Subaru to my 1959 two-stroke, two-cycle, wing-door Saab. Still, I’m awash these days in numbers – phone, credit card, checking account, passwords, etc. And the tune to "BEechwood 4-5789" is so much better than 1-212-234-5789. And when I call my mother, I still dial (even when I press a keypad) MUrray 4-3069.