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The older telephone exchanges were much more prone to mis-routing calls than the modern digital systems, so answering with your telephone number would avoid a wrong number conversation.

We should also note that 'party lines' were very common years ago. These were literally shared telephone lines where two or more neighbours were connected to the same telephone line. Each would have a different number and calls were routed to the correct party at first by the operator sending a coded ring (short bursts for Party A and long bursts fior Party B). This was replaced by special equipment positioned just prior to the junction which could differentiate between ringing signals.

Users of Party lines could listen in on each other's telephone conversations by simply lifting the reciever.

Posted By: Vivid Data Shark, Jul 10, 13:50:14