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From: vern@zebra.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Reminiscing: Mass Calling Prefixes (213) 520, etc.
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Date: 26 Sep 89 08:22:37 GMT
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In article , jsol@bu-it.bu.edu writes:
> Ah yes, I have stories about the mass calling prefixes (or numbers) in
> Connecticut (there weren't any) and elsewhere.

In the mid-fifties when television was in it's infancy, one of local
stations teamed with a super market chain to produce an audience
participation version of Bingo.  The playing slips were passed out at
the super market during the week.  Then on Saturday evening at 6 or 7 pm
the station had a 'LIVE' show during which the numbers were picked with
the usual column of air blowing numbered ping-pong balls from the bin.

Innocently, the TV station advertised it's own telephone number.  "Gee,
with a ten line PBX, we can handle the calls."  No way!  When the game
progressed to the point that boards were nearly complete, the calls
started to come in and all the telephones in downtown Denver quit
working.

On Monday, the Engineering staff was put to work to find a way that this
wouldn't happen again.  The TV station and the super-market had spent a
lot of money promoting the game so they were 'extremely' reluctant to
postpone future shows just because of an inconvenience to the Phone
Company.

Obviously the solution required additional equipment but where could they
find the equivalent of another Central Office in less than than a week?
Then someone eyed the companies own PBX.  It was the equivalent of a
central office and virtually unused at that time of the week.

During normal working hours some twenty operators were employed answering
incoming calls.  All the requests for service, personal calls to
employees as well as the many business calls were handled through the
one rotary number ( TAbor 5-4171 ).  But on Saturday night, only two
ladies were enough to handle the low volume of traffic.  Even then, they
brought in knitting to keep themselves busy.

Since the Central Office equipment and the PBX were in the same
building, it was a reasonable task to tie-in the PBX to the general
network.  They then assigned an unused prefix to generate a pseudo-exchange.
Calls coming into this pseudo-exchange were to be routed to the PBX and
paesed out to the TV station on a special line.

When the next Saturday night rolled around, the TV station announced
a different number in the pseudo-exchange for each game.  Actually, it
didn't matter what number they used used, everything went to them
anyhow but it added drama to the show.  They didn't announce the number
until half way through each game so the people at home could become
anxious as their boards began to fill in.

Everything worked well at the phone company except for one minor detail.
They forgot about the switchboard.  When all these calls came in on the
PBX, the switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.  The poor operators
were sure that the city had suffered a major calamity and they nearly
had heart attacks.

The next week, the switchboard was blocked out except for the couple of
lines reserved for company use.

This tale was related to me at the time by my father.  He was in the
Dial Traffic Engineering group at Mountain States Tel. & Tel., now U. S.
West Communications etc. etc. etc. ( Why they ever adopted such an
obnoxiously long name, snows me! )  It was his job to get something
working in one week's time.

Vernon C. Hoxie		       {ncar,nbires,boulder,isis}!scicom!zebra!vern
3975 W. 29th Ave.					voice: 303-477-1780
Denver, Colo., 80212				  TB+	 uucp: 303-455-2670