Word: digitalizing
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...policy racket (or numbers game) a player picks any three-digit number and bets pennies, nickels or more on it, or any combination of it, at a neighborhood confectionery store or newsstand. The winning number, determined daily, could be the last three of the dollar figures of U.S. Treasury receipts (as reported in the next day's newspapers), or the last three dollar numbers of the pari-mutuel receipts at a race track, or any other easily verified number. In any case, a player's chance of winning on one number is only one in 999; his winnings...
When Bell System executives grandly announced that all telephone exchange names would soon be replaced by seven-digit numbers in the name of progress (TIME, May 11), they presupposed the blind acceptance of a benumbed and be-numbered public. They were wrong: the telephone company is now facing a minor rebellion. In San Francisco last week the Anti-Digit Dialing League was incorporated to oppose "creeping numeralism." And an anti-digit patriot in Santa Rosa, unwilling to surrender one more word for three more numbers, cried: "Give me LIberty or take the blinking phone...
Fitting Machines. The A.D.D.L. was born a month ago when a want ad by angry San Francisco Organizer Carl V. May rallied a band of bitter anti-digit men, including famed Semanticist S. I. Hayakawa of San Francisco State College. Soon San Francisco lapels were sprouting A.D.D.L. buttons. Polling its readers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that two-thirds of the ballots were opposed to all-number dialing. Said Hayakawa: "These people are systematically trying to destroy the use of memory. They tell you to 'write it down,' not memorize it. Try writing a telephone number down...
...what is so complicated about long telephone numbers? Self-respecting production planners know at least 400 six-digit numbers by heart, and once the general code is known, the other digits automatically fall into place. As a matter of fact, memorizing numbers is as easy...
...Only eight of the numbers can be used for the first digit of a central office code since 0 (zero), now used to dial the Operator, is also reserved for a future person-to-person prefix; 1 will be used for station-to-station calls...