How do I understand the telephone number code?

Question

hey i want to get a basic concept of how to understand the phone code like the 877-CASH-NOW and how does 227 mean car and 938 mean wet such when you dial the number in your phone how it means letters does anyone know?

Answer 1

The original use of letters on telephone dials was for exchange names.   Various combinations were used in the early days, but eventually the American dial settled on the now familiar assignments: 2-ABC, 3-DEF, 4-GHI, 5-JKL, 6-MNO, 7-PRS, 8-TUV, 9-WXY.

In earlier times it was thought that long strings of numbers were harder to remember, and thus the first part of the phone number was dialed as letters representing the name of the telephone office which served the district.   There were various schemes involving the use of one, two, or three letters, but eventually the standard scheme in the U.S. was to use two letters followed by five numbers.   The two letters plus the first number indicated the telephone office, as today.

So you could have numbers such PLaza 1-2345 or MAdison 6-7890.   The letters and names were purely for human convenience.  As far as the equipment was concerned, you were just dialing 751-2345 or 626-7890, with the 751 or 626 indicating which exchange the call was destined for.

Of course, if you dialed "7" the equipment had no way of knowing whether you intended that to be the digit 7, or one of the three letters P-R-S.    

Thus if a city had PLaza 1 (751) and PLaza 2 (752) numbers, it could not also have PLymouth 1 or PLymouth 2, but it could have PLymouth 3 (753).    Similarly, if a city had a BEekman 5 exchange it could not also have ADams 5, since that would be the same prefix (235), but it could have ADams 4 or ADams 6, etc.

In most areas the use of exchange names/letters was dropped during the 1960s, but a few places still used them right up until the late 1970s.  

With all-figure numbers it became possible to use prefixes for which it had previously been very difficult to devise suitable names, e.g. there weren't many sensible names one could make from 99x, 55x, 59x, and 95x codes.  

The modern use of the letters in promoting business is simply companies requesting specific numbers so that they can then advertise in the way you describe.  So to use your example, the company simply obtained the number 877-227-4669 so that they could show it as 877-CASH-NOW.    You could just as easily advertise it with any other combination of letters which match the numbers, e.g. 877-CAR-I-MOW.   As far as the telephone equipment is concerned, you are just dialing 877-227-4669.  It neither knows nor cares whether you are dialing some of those digits as letters.

Answer 2

As the previous questioner said there are letters on most modern keypads. If you have such a keypad you will notice that each number can mean one  of several letters (or in the case of number 1 no letters at all!)

Basically the letters are actually nothing to do with what you are dialling, you are actually dialling numbers corresponding to the letters and the telephone exchange recognises the numbers not the letters.

The letters are simply there for convenience and ease of memorising and advertising:  generally the company will  try and obtain a number which works out to suitable letters like 877-CASH-NOW.

Answer 3

._. there should be letters on the keys

Answer 4

there are letters on the keys starting with 2 going to 9 all of them have 3 letters except 9 which has wxyz.