AT&T Archives : Mr. Digit and the Battle of Bubbling Brook

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See more from the AT&T Archives at techchannel.att...
Mr. Digit explains the change to all-number calling in this 1961 film starring the then-well-known radio and television team, Peg Lynch and Alan Bunce ("Ethel and Albert"). They portray a couple coming home from vacation to find their time-honored telephone number, "Bubbling Brook 3-2468", is being changed to seven numerals. Ethel is, naturally, upset to be losing her identity.
Mr. Digit is featured in the animated portion of the film, as the "numbers man" from the telephone company. He explains the new numbering system to Ethel and shows that "we're running out of numbers under our present numbering system." He discusses some expected communications services of the future and the necessity of all-number calling to make improvements in present services as well as those expected to come. Ethel finds the change isn't as radical as she thought, and "she might like it, at that."
It's hard to imagine running out of our current 10-digit phone numbers, and the world has been in no danger of this, even with cell service multiplying numbers in great quantities. Currently there are approximately 660 area codes available in North America, with over 300 area codes in use now. There are approximately 5.3 billion potential numbers available, based on the 660 area codes.
Produced by UPA Pictures
Directed by Robert Larsen
Animation by Chuck Couch
Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

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11 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 69

@HELPLADYBANDME 11 лет назад

That's my Mom up there, how exciting to find this. I remember her going to LA to film it.

@RRaquello 10 лет назад

I've heard them, Peg Lynch & Alan Bunce, on hundreds of old radio shows, but this is the first time I've seen them on film. Unlike a lot of radio stars, they look exactly like what you'd expect them to look like from hearing their voices.

@VoteScientist 12 лет назад

Mr. Digit was voiced by the wonderful Howard McNair. (AKA Floyd the Barber)

@SallySallySallySally 7 лет назад

Howard McNear

@apl175 12 лет назад

One of the few youtube videos that uses the pop up annotations appropriately

@ChristopherSobieniak 12 лет назад

Love the annotations. Should be pointed out Henry Saperstein took over UPA in 1960 (prior to that, it was ran by Stephen Bosustow since the 1940's, where he, David Hilberman and Zack Schwartz founded the studio), some would often attribute that to UPA's declining years of few TV productions as well as the licensing of Japanese monster films or "Kaiju".

@Empty00Eyes 10 лет назад

Sort of funny how removing the numbers from the dial pad seems weirder than space phone calls these days.

@OldsVistaCruiser 8 месяцев назад

At 16:56, there is a Bell System logo that allegedly was introduced in 1964, according to Google searches!

@OldsVistaCruiser Год назад

At 9:22, it shows UPA's phone number, which it also shows at the very end.

@OldsVistaCruiser Год назад

"Well, the time when your own number has to be changed is still some time away" at 4:45. Did they have Caller ID in 1961?

@ryansullivan1327 5 лет назад

"Mary and Joseph had their baby! It's a boy! They are going to name him Henry!" I wonder why I thought they'd name him Jesus...

@Joe-ft4qm 5 лет назад

you're thinking of maria and jose

@mitchdakelman4470 3 года назад

A fine film, I acquired a Technicolor copy many years ago.

@kd1s 12 лет назад

Heh - and to think we're in danger of exhausting IPV4 address space right now.

@lancelotxavier9084 6 лет назад

kd1s - Telecoms make a lot of money leasing IP numbers. Hardware and os have loooooong been able to handle ipv6 for a loooooong time. Telecoms just refuse to enable it.

@prfo5554 6 лет назад

The IPv6 standard came out in 1998. IPv6 use didn't start to take off until 2012. Yet, as of June 24, 2018 only about 20%-23% of Google's web traffic is IPv6. I believe most of the recent increase in adoption is due to some ISPs giving some of their users duel stack routers. However, if you ask me 20 years is a long time, in the computer world, for a standard to get only to a 23% adoption rate.

@DuplicatedOnce 12 лет назад

5:51 Canada too, ehh.

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

LL could have been used. Just dial LLoyd 5-0000. LLewellyn 5-0000. (That comes out as 555) LY could have been LYnbrook or LYcoming.

@willpoundstone71 5 лет назад

7:50 And that's why every phone number on TV or in movies starts with 555

@Guyfromhe 10 лет назад

They didn't even change the numbers they just changed the way they were perceived... People could keep sticking 2 letters on their phone numbers if they wanted... Heck I could even do it now if I wanted to...

@RRaquello 10 лет назад

That's true. Where I live the phone numbers commonly begin with 984. It was a long time before I learned that, before the switch to numbers, the exchange was Yukon 4 or YU4 or-voila-984.

@ChristopherSobieniak 9 лет назад

RRaquello It would still work.

@OldsVistaCruiser 5 лет назад

My number, had it existed during letter exchanges, would have been HIstory 2. Actually, HIlltop 2, but that doesn't show up as easily in RU-vid font.

@MkRorky 5 лет назад

Not if your first two digits include a 1 or a 0.

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

@@MkRorky - The first number cannot contain a 0 or 1. It can now be in the 2nd position, and that's the very reason for this video.

@ChristopherUSSmith 6 лет назад

12:12 Imagine that... AT&T forecast the splitting of area codes... in 1961!!!

@cityofabscissae 5 лет назад

They didn't forecast it as it was already taking place at that time and had been for some years.

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

The very first area code, (201), covered all of New Jersey. The (609) was split off of it in 1958 for southern NJ. That state now has 10 area codes.

@dhpbear2 5 лет назад

12:57 - Merlin!

@portal1523 5 месяцев назад

How does all-number calling free millions of numbers

@am74343 11 лет назад

11:40 "mobile telephones"???

@CiscoWes 6 лет назад

He pronounced it like Mobile Alabama

@ssbohio 6 лет назад

Mobile telephones have been offered since shortly after World War II, though cellular phones didn't come out until the 1980s.

@OldsVistaCruiser 4 года назад

Yeah, as well as the beepers that made a brief appearance in the 1990s. That's why we now have area codes that look like exchanges, and vice versa. That's why we now have 10-digit dialing.

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

I have lived in the Hatboro, PA phone exchange several times. It has several 95x exchanges, as shown at 7:45. That would have been impossible in the OSborne days.

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

In the beginning, there was OSborne 2 and OS5. My Hatboro number was always all-numeric 674. The first non-67x exchange that was added was 215-956.

@robertgift6762 2 года назад

Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show?

@OldsVistaCruiser 10 месяцев назад

Yes. Howard McNear.

@dianebrown4955 6 лет назад

That's so stupid Bubbingbrook 3 is still 283 because BU 3 is still 283 so they just took away the letters

@GameMaker3_5 5 лет назад

so yeah its only a minor differance and some can still do stuff like strap stuff like that

@MsJamiewoods 3 года назад

Just wait to the future -- the 1980s -- fax machines each with their own number in every office, personal pagers, and for the affluent, cellular telephones in their cars. Or perhaps a portable "brick phone." Each pager or cellular phone will need it's own phone number. By the early 2000s both spouses will have their own hand-held cell phone and by the end of the decade, every kid over age 8 will have their own cell phone. And that means even more phone numbers. Oh come 2007 some company (named after a species of fruit tree) in "Silicone Valley" will find a way to put a tiny computer into a cellular phone.

@OldsVistaCruiser Год назад

You forgot that back in the day, modems required their own phone numbers for dial-up internet!

@marcfield1234 Год назад

And guess what? Those letters are still on those key pads even the virtual ones. So much for that wonderful prediction.

@jmitterii2 2 года назад

Well, this will show all those Karens to quit bothering the phone company changing to all number dialing.

@SteveCarras 11 лет назад

Just caught on to his involvement here. Sounds like stock music used, the same as on Gumby (Capitol Records).

@prfo5554 6 лет назад

Bellboy sounds like it could be the name of a Nintendo game console.

@robertcuminale1212 5 лет назад

I used a Bellboy when I worked as an installer years ago. It used the Bell name and boy leaving a message like in a hotel. You had to find a phone to call in though. The newer ones had voice capabilities but we had too many jerks who would leave obnoxious messages without a care as to where you were.

@cornjobb 5 лет назад

your name sounds like a fart

@OldsVistaCruiser Год назад

The letters are shown at the end to the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," while the numbers are represented by "Yankee Doodle." Patriotic?

@christianmiller1723 3 года назад

Funny that we still haven't removed letters from telephone dials.

@elizabethpinon2782 2 года назад

We in at&t

@JohnHenryUS 7 лет назад

It sure would be cool if your media experts could figure out how annotations work. Trying to read all this wonderful trivia while it's all piled up on top of itself so you've got two or three sentences superimposed on each other and can't read any of them is really annoying.

@dhpbear2 4 года назад

A better quality video can be found here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5BB8EdbSdtM.html

@OldsVistaCruiser 2 года назад

The YT account associated with that video was terminated.

@RogersRoyal 4 года назад

I just looked up what my numbers were when it was just letters in this area and its still the same for the area even after all this time. So its kind of silly, they just removed the letters and used the same exact numbers that the letters were anyway. Even after all this time its exactly what the letters were. I get why they did it and it makes sense but how anyone could think it was a big deal when it was still the same exact number, is what I don't get. And to this day phones still have letters on them by the way. Very silly that they thought people would g et that upset that you now say the two numbers instead of the letters for phone calls but the numbers of an area stay the same even with the cosmetic change.

@PatrickBaptist 5 лет назад

Hmm ATT must have always looked at their customers as goobers that have to be talked to and explained things to like children LOL. They felt they needed a cartoon to explain this crap, they need to do that with their road side members LOL. I've worked for ATT, you would have to to understand.

@willpoundstone71 11 месяцев назад

They had good reason. Ethel's apprehension about changing to all-number calling was reflected in the views of many. They thought it was a presage for a time when people would lose their identities and be nothing more than cogs in a machine.

@PatrickBaptist 11 месяцев назад

@@willpoundstone71 Customers are usually simpletons that need cartoon learning gotcha. How people think companies look at them as anything but a number is pathetic, a business isn't a person can't expect personal treatment from such an impersonal business. They aren't the phone, it's just the number for the phone, it's not "their number" it's "their PHONE number", simple English is over alot of peoples heads though.

@ChristopherSobieniak 12 лет назад

@kd1s See how easy it all seemed!