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I'm not sure how many Washingtonians remember, but all the exchanges around here used to be listed by two letters followed by a number. For example, my parent's exchange was 622-xxxx, but it was listed as MAyfair2-xxxx, or MA2-xxxx for short. "The time" and "The weather" were listed as "TI4-xxxx" and "WE6-xxxx," respectively. If you called TI4-2525 (I'm pretty sure it was any 4 numbers), you'd get, "At the tone, the time will be ... 11 AM, and 40 seconds ... beep! At the tone, the time will be ... 11 AM, and 50 seconds ... beep!" I always wanted to do it right before the changeover to/from Daylight Savings Time, but I never did. If you called WE6-1212 (it might have been any 4 numbers), you'd get 'the National Weather Report' for "Washington, DC and vicinity," followed by a lengthy (30-60-second report) of the 1-2 day weather. This was all free-of-charge. As a child, I did both of these regularly, and took it for granted that everyone else in the world did, too. Thank you to AT&T for providing us with these useful services! Does anyone know what year they started? BTW, calling Northern Virginia (or even Potomac) from Silver Spring was a long-distance call, and quite pricey. It somehow "knew" that you were calling long-distance - I'm pretty sure this lasted at least until the end of the 1970s, and you didn't have to dial a "1" before the call. Columbia, MD (eventually, area code 410, was definitely a long-distance call, even-more expensive than a 'local long-distance' call). Any information about all of this will be much-appreciated.
