Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!casbah.acns.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: The Correct Way to Write Your Phone Number Message-ID: Date: 9 Mar 91 13:16:00 GMT Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Mr. News) Organization: 52 Manchester Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Lines: 35 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 188, Message 5 of 10 Originator: telecom@delta.eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: hub.eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu The main reason that Zenith and Enterprise numbers are obsolete is that they cost so much. I believe that they are normally billed at the same rate as a collect call, and a monthly charge applies as well. (Of course, the time spent in having the operator handle the call also contributes to making Zenith and Enterprise numbers less attractive.) Zenith sounds like a better name than Enterprise because people might try to dial the Enterprise number as EN-XXXX, thinking that it was a local call. There's no risk of that with a Zenith number, since you won't find the Z anywhere on a modern North American telephone dial. (I think some old dials had the Z on the zero, though.) Nigel Allen ndallen@contact.uucp [Moderator's Note: I've got a 'Model Z' Western Electric / Bell phone in my collection of stuff here. The date stamped on the bottom of the phone says it was manufactured by Western Electric Hawthorne Works, July, 1930. The last pull on the dial is both 0 / Operator and 'Z'. One of the first models to incorporate the bell inside the phone itself (rather than requiring a 'side-ringer' or box mounted elsewhere on the wall like the candlestick phones) this one also has a BROWN CLOTH covered, *straight, uncurled* cord from the handset to the base of the phone, and the same brown cloth covered wire from the phone out to the spade lug connectors. When I (rarely) hook it up, it works fine, although it sounds terrible -- the audio is bad. If I bang the mouthpiece a little to shake up the carbon granules, it sounds better. I found it in an obscure place twenty years ago after it had been in service for probably forty years: the elevator machinery room on the roof of the Chicago Temple Building ... it was an extension on the building's PBX system. They liked the 'modern' 2500 set I gave them to replace it! :) (Just like they loved the wall clocks I gave them to replace the two Western Union clocks in the auditorium.) PAT]