I live in a relatively small city, Walla Walla, WA which has a current population of about 40k.
A friend of mine runs an historical blog website that features a new group of photos and other such historical stuff each day. Today his blog features a bunch of ads from the newspaper from 1903.
What I find interesting are the various "prefixes" that seemed to be in place within this town at the time. Walla Walla was manual until 1956 and later phone books, I.E. 1945 don't make any mention of these prefixes.
The numbers are all 2, 3 and 4 digits long, and are usually preceeded by a prefix, but not always. Some don't refer to any prefix at all. Most others have Red, White, Blue, Black, White and Main.
I am wondering if there would have been color coded strips of jacks on the switchboards. Depending on how many positions there were, the multiples would all have to be coded with the same color.
Here is a link to the ads I am talking about:
http://wallawalladrazanphotos.blogspot.com/2014/03/advertising-miscellany-of-1903.htmlMy question: Was this a common practice in 1903 in other towns?