IBM System7use of Teletype as console 2548

Yes. That's the one. Enon Valley was based down state somewhere (Brookville, maybe?) -- they held the territory from W. Springfield (Extreme NW Corner of PA), South to Albion, and thence into Crawford County (Meadville.) They held a narrow corridor south from Meadville that extended into parts of Mercer County, Venango County, Clarion, and on down into the west-central parts of PA north of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. Alltel purchased the system in the early 1980's and still holds that little bit of what would normally be GTE (Verizon) territory.

It makes for interesting calling when everybody else in the county is not only a customer of another company, but long-distance as well. The telephone switch in question was part of the 756 exchange and also handled part of the 922 exchange.

A common solution for businesses that wanted to do county-wide commerce was to get a "foreign exchange" (FX) line from Girard (part of the GTE system.)

Folks would sometimes have a WATTS line (1-800 number), a local number from Enon Valley (756 prefix) and a local number from GTE (774 prefix.) It made implementing E911 an interesting exercise back in the late 1980's, early 1990's.)

As an interesting aside, there were areas in Crawford County (Saegertown) that still had manual "plugboard" switching well into the 1970's.

To accomodate long party lines in Albion (without using different ring frequencies in the physical plant), you could call your own line by dialing 66-756-lovex, and let the phone ring a specified number of times.

The 756 and 922 exchanges also supported "shortcut" dialing. Instead of dialing the complete seven digit number, you could dial as few as four digits. To call home from school, I had to dial five: 6 (specified the Albion 756 exchange) and then the four digit telephone number. You could also dial a 9 to get the Springfield exchange.

Some services still had a "Zenith" lines, where you called the operator and gave her a four digit number to complete the call. Some that I can remember were the Pa State Police in Girard, the FBI Office in Erie, and Penelec in Girard.

You had non-standard direct-distance-dialing as well. You had to dial a "1" for long-distance, and then a second "1". I always thought the second "1" specified the long-distance carrier, but I'm not sure of that now.

I'm probably munging part of the corporate history. My wife reminds me that there was a brief period when it was the "Brookville Telephone" Co, instead of Enon Valley. She says that Enon valley was based in Ohio.

This points to a need for some actual research :-) I may have to dig a little deeper...