Telephone numbers were originally four or five digits long, preceded by the name of the local exchange station, a mnenomic system that helped operators quickly route calls to the proper location. Even after the exchange system was phased out in favor of direct dial, the practice of introducing a number with the exchange name persisted (telcos believed seven numbers were too many to remember) before yielding to the dustbin of history in the age of all-number calling.

» History of exchanges | More history
» Telephone Exchange Name Project
» Search for exchange names
» Ma Bell-recommended exchange names

Thus, a telephone number was a direct representation of one's geographic location, and, by extension, one's social status. As Jonathan Schwartz wrote in New York Magazine in 1987:

"The ATwater girl was an East Side girl, a taxi-hailing girl, on her way to her job at Benton and Bowles ... And what about a SPring-7 girl, twirling the ends of her long brown hair as she lay on her bed talking to you on the phone? A Greenwich Village girl. A 777 girl is nothing. She is invisible. She is without irony, seldom listens to music." [source]

Even though the first two or three digits of a telephone number no longer trace directly to a specific exchange location, the letters remain, co-opted as useful mnemonics by companies like 1-800-MATTRES ("leave off the last 'S' for savings") and creative types such my sister, once to be found at 607-RAW-OLIV (alas, no longer, guys). Number-to-letter tracing is alive and well, leading not to a location but to something more transcendent and ephemeral.

What I propose is a system that uses this mapping in some way to trace a number beyond its geographical location, returning not an intersection or street address but instead a representation of the number's semantic importance. In a sense, this interface will mirror the work done by Robert Redford's character in Three Days of the Condor, but reading numbers -- not books -- in order to reveal hidden secrets.