Englewood, New Jersey

Englewood is a city located in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 26,203.

Historical note

The telephone industry made a United States "first" here with the introduction of what is known now as Direct Distance Dialing (DDD). Starting on November 10, 1951, customers of the ENglewood 3, ENglewood 4 and TEaneck 7 exchanges (who could already dial New York City and area) were able to dial 11 cities across the United States, simply by dialing the three-digit area code and the seven digit number (or the three-digit area code and the local number of two letters and five digits).

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The 11 cities were Boston (617), Chicago (312), Cleveland (216), Detroit (313), Milwaukee (414), Oakland (415), Philadelphia (215), Pittsburgh (412), Providence (401), Sacramento (916) and San Francisco (318). Many other cities could not yet be included as they did not yet have the necessary switching equipment to automatically handle incoming calls on their long distance circuits. Other cities still had either a mixture of local number lengths or were all still six-digit numbers; Montreal and Toronto, Canada, for example, had a mix of six- and seven-digit numbers from 1951 to 1957, and did not have DDD until 1958. Whitehorse, Yukon, had seven-digit numbers from 1965, but the necessary switching equipment was not in place locally until 1972.

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San Francisco required the special area code 318 for temporary routing requirements; later, a new device became available that allowed the central office code number dialed by the customer to be scanned to determine the proper trans-continental trunks directly to San Francisco, and the city's area code reverted to 415. The new device used metal cards similar in principle to computer punch cards, and they were rapidly scanned as they fell past a light beam. On busy days, it sounded like a machine gun firing!

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