Ozark Album : Direct dialing comes to Fayetteville
Posted on Sunday, July 6, 2008
In July 1966 Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. announced the latest technology in phone calling was coming to Fayetteville: direct distance dialing or "DDD. "This allowed city telephone customers to make long distance calls without the help of an operator, simply by dialing 1 plus the area code and the phone number. "DDD is not difficult," assured Bob Sells, Southwestern Bell general manager. Along with DDD came electronic recording and billing of calls. Instead of an operator noting the time and duration of a call, this information was tracked by a machine which punched codes into a tape which was then fed into an accounting machine. In this photo, Southwestern Bell employees Clarence Earlywine and Linda Spencer check the electronic billing machine tape. With the announcement of DDD, Southwestern Bell also unveiled a second exchange number for Fayetteville. The familiar Hillcrest 2 and Hillcrest 3 (442 and 443 ) prefixes would now be joined by Jackson 1 numbers (521 ). Photo courtesy of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History's Northwest Arkansas Times Collection.
• • • Ozark Album is published every Sunday in the Northwest Arkansas Times. If you have a historically interesting photo to share, bring it to the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, 118 W. Johnson Ave. in Springdale. Pictures will be copied and returned. Be sure to include the date the picture was taken, names of the people photographed and any historical information available, as well as your name and phone number. For more information, call 750-8165.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
