refractal

Just came across this advertisement from a September 1914 edition of Modern Mechanix [via the Map Room] that shows all of the telephone exchanges that existed in the US at that time. (Aside: in a North American phone number, the “555″ is the exchange: 1-XXX-555-YYYY). Propoganda value asside, it is quite a fascinating map. We see that the highest density of exchanges originated in Pittsburgh and extended out like a large sneeze all across the Midwest (who would have thought?). Ahh, to imagine a time when Florida was just a backwater swamp and California had roughly the same telecommunications density as North Dakota. I bet Detroit was just twitching to become an industrial powerhouse…