Editing Direct distance dialing (section)

==History==
The first direct-dialed long-distance telephone calls were possible in the [[New Jersey]] communities of [[Englewood, New Jersey|Englewood]] and [[Teaneck, New Jersey|Teaneck]]. Customers of the ENglewood 3, ENglewood 4 and TEaneck 7 exchanges, who could already dial telephone numbers in the New York City area, could place calls to eleven major cities across the United States by dialing the three-digit [[area code]] and the seven-digit directory number. Local telephone numbers still consisted of the first two letters of the [[Telephone exchange names|central office name]] and five digits. On November 10, 1951, Englewood mayor [[M. Leslie Denning]] made the first customer-dialed [[long-distance call]], to Mayor [[Frank Osborne (California politician)|Frank Osborne]] of [[Alameda, California]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=Englewood Begins Long Distance Customer Dialing |journal=[[Bell Laboratories Record]] |date=December 1951 |volume=29 |issue=12 |pages=571–572 |url=https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Bell-Laboratories-Record/50s/Bell-Laboratories-Record-1951-12.pdf#page=27}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/22/archives/new-jersey-weekly-whos-on-first-why-new-jersey-of-course.html?_r=0 |title=Who's on First? Why, New Jersey, of Course |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |date=July 22, 1979 |access-date=May 28, 2017 |quote=More recently, on Nov. 10, 1951, Mayor Leslie Denning of Englewood telephoned Mayor Frank Osborne of Alameda, Calif., without the help of an operator and Englewood became the first city in the nation whose residents had direct‐dial coast‐to‐coast service.}}</ref>

The destinations, and their area codes, equipped with a long-distance toll-switch at that time were:
{{div col|colwidth=15em}}
* [[area code 617|617]]: [[Boston]], Massachusetts
* [[area code 312|312]]: [[Chicago]], Illinois
* [[area code 216|216]]: [[Cleveland]], Ohio
* [[area code 313|313]]: [[Detroit]], Michigan
* [[area code 414|414]]: [[Milwaukee]], Wisconsin
* [[area code 415|415]]: [[Oakland, California|Oakland]], California
* [[area code 215|215]]: [[Philadelphia]], Pennsylvania
* [[area code 412|412]]: [[Pittsburgh]], Pennsylvania
* [[area code 401|401]]: [[Providence, Rhode Island]]
* [[area code 916|916]]: [[Sacramento, California|Sacramento]], California
* [[area code 318|318]]: [[San Francisco]], California
{{div col end}}

Other areas could not yet be included in DDD as they did not have the necessary toll switching equipment, or because they still did not use a seven-digit local numbering plan. [[Montreal]], [[Quebec]], and [[Toronto]], [[Ontario]], in Canada, for example, had a mix of six- and seven-digit telephone numbers from 1951 to 1957, and did not have DDD until 1958. [[Whitehorse, Yukon|Whitehorse]], [[Yukon]], had seven-digit numbers starting in 1965, but the necessary switching equipment was not in place until 1972.

San Francisco required the special area code 318 due to temporary routing requirements. San Francisco and Oakland each had their own separate toll-switches, so calls had to be routed accordingly depending on the final destination. As the telephone equipment used at the time could only handle three-digit translation, the temporary use of area code 318 was required to distinguish between the two areas. Area code 318 was temporarily used to specify San Francisco and areas north of the [[Golden Gate]], while calls with destinations in [[Oakland, California|Oakland]] and the [[East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area)|East Bay]] continued to use area code 415. When the electromechanical card-translator box became available in the 1952–53 period, six-digit translation became possible and the use of area code 318 was no longer required. Area code 318 was reclaimed for future use (now used as an area code for northern [[Louisiana]]), and the entire [[San Francisco Bay Area]] returned to using area code 415.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.textfiles.com/digest/TELECOMDIGEST/vol16.iss0401-0450.txt |journal=Telecom Digest |title=When Was Direct Distance Dialing Cut In? |date=August 15, 1996 |volume=16 |issue=401 |editor-first=Patrick A. |editor-last=Townson}}</ref>