A New Numbering System for Local Calls

Dial service was already part of Shamokin's telephone system when another change took effect on July 17, 1960. The News-Dispatch's 1964 telephone history gave that date for the introduction of all-number calling. It treated the new numbering practice as a separate milestone from the September 1952 dial conversion.

The feature described Shamokin as the first exchange in Pennsylvania to use the procedure. That distinction is the retrospective's claim, not an independently established comparison of every exchange. The clearly dated local milestone in its account is the change to all-number calling itself.

Its later figures listed 12,247 telephones for 1961, 12,747 for 1962 and 13,378 for 1963. Those annual snapshots place the numbering change within a much larger system than the few dozen instruments of the early office. They do not explain the conversion's exact instructions or implementation, which the brief chronology leaves undescribed.