Okay, I can't resist any more. My experience with phone numbers is
vividly etched in my mind. My experience is from Trenton, NJ (the
fun capitol of the country). From the time I was born until I was
about 7 (1946), our number was 8463. At about 7 it was changed to
8-8463 and within two years was changed to TRenton 8-8463. At 11
(1950) I moved to Rahway, NJ where the number was RAhway 7-3979
until it changed when I was 14 (just starting high school in 1953) to
729-3979. When I was 18, we moved again to a quaint little town in
south Jersey named Leesburg and our number there was 711 R11. A 8
party line, but we only got four different rings and ours was a long
and a short. The curious thing about this - and this is where it is
psychologically related - the only other phone number that I have had
or have is my current number. I can't even remember the number I had
before I moved within the town I live in now only 5 years ago. I use
this example when talking about memory in the intro course, but I
can't remember for the life of my why I use it.
On Aug 26, 2005, at 2:25 PM, Beth Benoit wrote:
I suspect that one of the reasons for the change from name
exchanges (Butterfield, Murray Hill, etc.) was to overcome spelling
confusion.
In my hometown (Lima, Ohio), I remember when phone numbers went
from five numbers to a name + 5 numbers. Our exchange was
"Catherine" (22), named after the wife of the phone company's
owner. Naturally, that got to be confusing, because operators were
likely to spell it beginning with a "K." Switching to all numbers
made much more sense.
Dr. Bob Wildlbood
Lecturer in Psychology
Indiana University Kokomo
Kokomo, IN 56904-9003
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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