Re: Dating tips...

[Christopher G Mullin <mullin@selway.umt.edu>]

On Fri, 30 Oct 1998 Cugall@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 30-Oct-98 9:19:11 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> RobertMueller@worldnet.att.net writes:
> 
> > To assist me in dating ephemera, (1) can anyone inform me when postal =
> >  Zip codes were introduced? (I was around, but I don't remember.) And =
> >  (2), for the same purposes, when did telephone exchanges move from a =
> >  simple three digits to seven, or ten? Thanks to any and all. Bob Mueller
> 
> (1)  1962.

Sounds right to me....

> (2) Sorry, I don't know.

This one was very much a local decision-- the larger the city, the sooner
they added digits.  After there were 1000 phones in a given city, new
numbers had 4 digits!  Remember, phone companies were local entities at
first, and nobody was setting national standards. Some places they may
have started out with more digits than they really needed at first. 

If your library has either a run of old phone books or a run of city
directories for the city where the ephemeral item was published you can
establish earliest possible dates in particular instances.  Note that some
whone numbers in a given city *might* remain 4 digits after others were 5
digits-- and this will vary from town to town! 
   --Chris
> 

Christopher G. Mullin		mullin@selway.umt.edu	  | I buy good
Special Collections Librarian	406-243-4036 (voice mail) | regular-8mm
University of Montana		406-243-2060 (fax)        | movie stuff
Missoula, MT  59812     	Who else has *these* opinions--not UM!