How do phone companies move landline numbers when a business relocates from one address to another within the same exchange? Did a business, say in the 1960s or 1970s, have to change numbers when moving to a different location?
In: Technology
When phones were brand new, the latest and greatest technology, each house with a phone would be connected by a wire. You’d call the exchange, tell the person who you wanted to talk to, and they would physically plug in a wire into the right holes in a big panel (the switchboard). Then you’d have a direct wire from your house to the other person – until the call ended, and they unplugged the connection at the switchboard.
Later, these human switchboard operators were replaced with a machine to do the same job. You’d dial a phone number identifying who you wanted to talk to, and the switchboard would automatically make an electrical connection between you and the right person.
Later, it became possible to change the mapping between “phone number” and “wire”, so a business could keep their phone number when they moved. The switchboard machine (or maybe computer) would just have to have its information updated.
Gradually, as things became more computerised, and phone lines started to carry internet as well, phones became internet destinations, and the mapping was from phone number to phone (instead of to wire). But we’re well beyond the 60’s and 70’s by that stage.
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