Buffalo in 1960: Phone numbers changing to two letters-five numbers

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

New York Telephone called it a sign of our area’s great progress in one sentence, and then in the next sentence said it’s happening everywhere around the country.

It was this week 55 years ago that Ma Bell began getting telephone users ready to ditch phone numbers like TRiangle 9820 and PArkside 1344, in favor of new versions like TA2-9820 and TF3-1344.

By the end of the 1960s, letters completely gave way to numbers in phone numbers around the country and in Buffalo.

05-jan-1960-new-phone-numbers

Published by

Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.