Alpha Representation of phone number with a zero

[winkydink]

I am looking to make personalized dial cards for a bunch of phones that I am giving as gifts this Christmas.  One of the phone numbers is 303- XXXX.  I saw a document that listed all the official Western Electric / ATT pnuemonics, however, they do not use zero for any of the first 2 numbers.

I have though of using EZra 3- XXXX.

Does any one know if there are any "official" Letters for 303 ?

Thanks.

[LarryInMichigan]

Winkydink,

In the good old days, telephone exchange numbers could never have a 1 or 0 as their middle digit.  Since many North American dial plates have 'Z' over the 0, using 'z' to be pseudo-authentic.

Larry

[AE_Collector]

As Larry said, never happened. Letters at the beginning of phone numbers was eliminated well before numbers were "allowed" to have a zero or a one as the second digit of the Exchange code.

However, most people would not know "the rules" so your choice sounds good to me.

Terry

[ESalter]

I ran into the same problem, not wanting a 0, but the prefix for my number is 219, can't really find an exchange name to match that.  It's a shame too, I would have liked to have an exchange name type number on my business cards.  ---Eric

[LarryInMichigan]

My exchange starts with 55, so that would be KLondike.  It sounds a bit exotic.

Larry

[GG]

Unfortunately, today the digit 7 = PQRS, and 9 = WXYZ on modern keypads.  If you use EZra, the people you give the phones to might be tempted to give out their numbers that way, and people who call them will dial 393 instead of 303, leading to much unhappiness all 'round. 

So I'd suggest using an oldschool number card and then printing it with e.g. "Area Code 311" above, and the phone number 303-XXXX below, using an oldish typewriter font.  That will have approximately the right aesthetic, and won't lead to problems later.

Now if you were doing this for your own use, and you had a bunch of GPO or French PTT phones, both of which have the letters O and Q above the letter 0, you could come up with something that works with that combination, e.g. EQuity 3-XXXX.  Just as long as you didn't give out your number that way, whereby people would dial 373-XXXX. 

As for avoiding getting NXX-NXX-XXXX phone numbers: sometimes a disability is an advantage.  "I'm dyslexic and if I get a combination like that, I'm going to end up flipping the area code & prefix..."   (Had I known I'm dyslexic when I first got my local phone number, the one I've had for over 25 years, I would never ever ever have tolerated getting one where the last four digits look like part of my zip code!  For a while that caused me to screw up both my own phone number and my postal zip code.)   

For dyslexic accessibility, there are other combinations to avoid, but it's difficult to spell that out in a set of rules.  The simplest thing I've found is to try to get a number with two repeating digits in the last four, e.g. 1223, or 2234, or 3455, those kinds of numbers. 

And while we're on the subject, anyone here in who's in the telephone industry would do well to know that in the Chinese language, the pronunciation of the word for 4 is the same as the word for "death."  Subscribers who are Chinese or who do a lot of business with the Chinese community try to avoid phone numbers and PBX extensions with 4s in them for that reason.  So if you just quietly avoid assigning numbers that contain 4s, they'll see that and appreciate that you understand a cultural convention that most other folks don't. 

[winkydink]

Does anyone know what type face (font type) the average dial card was printed with.  I am going to try to replicate this from a (computer) program I am writing.

I have this web site for dial cards

http://www.telephonearchive.com/numbercards/

I seem to remember their were others, that allowed you to edit and put in your phone number to the dial cards.  Any one have the link to this site ?

[rp2813]

I found the "Calibri" font to be the closest match to the original 1960 "Type III" card that I used as a reference (pictured below).

I used 14pt bold for CY and switched to unbolded (a judgement call) 9pt for "PRESS", and back to 14pt bold for "-5"

For the line number, I used 14pt but instead of black I made it a dark gray to simulate the typed/stamped look, and printed it out onto light gray paper.

As it happens, I'm trying to locate that same number card site you mentioned.

[HarrySmith]

That card looks great!
From looking at the cards on the archive pages it appears there is no "standard" font, size or layout, there are a lot of different ones pictured there.

[rp2813]

Harry, that's the original card I used as my guide.  I can't seem to find any pictures of the card I made, but will keep looking.

[Bill]

Somewhere I found an "official" telephone font in a downloadable format. I put it on my computer, and it looked pretty good for the purpose. I can't find it now, but will search and post if no one else finds it first. It's out there! Maybe on TCI??

Bill

[Bill]

Nope, not Hawthorn. Hawthorn is the zig-zaggy lightning-bolt font. The one I am thinking of is still out there.

Bill

The font was called "Hawthorn", and I found it on the Bell System Memorial site. Try

http://www.porticus.org/bell/westernelectric_history.html#Font

It is almost at the bottom of the (long!) page.

Bill

[winkydink]

On another thread I showed this, but I will also show it here.  Below is some output from a computer program I wrote in C# language using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) for any of you computer programmers out there.

I used the Arial font with a font size of 14 for the first two letters, a font size of between 8-and 11 (8 for "ERTH AMBOY") for the smaller letters and font size of 11 for all the rest of the numbers.  I also used bold type face.

If someone discovers what the type face should be for these dial cards, I will change my programs default font type to that.

fyi:  I airbrushed out the last 4 digits for security reasons.

After Christmas and New Years, when I have some more time, I plan on cleaning up the program so that others who are not programmers can use it easily.  If possible I will try to post for download to this forum.

I will keep you updated.