Fictional Usage
The phone companies began encouraging the producers of television shows and movies to use the 555 prefix for fictional telephone numbers, roughly during the 1960s. One of the earliest uses of a 555 number can be seen in Panic in Year Zero! (1962), with 555-2106. In older television shows from the 1950s or 1960s, "KLondike 5" or "KLamath 5" was used, as at the time the telephone exchanges used letters and numbers in phone numbers. More recent works set in this period typically use this convention as well.
The number "2368" is a carryover from "EXchange 2368", which was common in old telephone advertisements. This represents "Exchange Central", with 2368 being the numeric version of "CENTral" in alphabetic dialing.
Before "555" or "KLondike-5" gained broad usage, and before touchtone phones became standard, scriptwriters would sometimes invent fake exchanges starting with words like "QUincy" or "ZEbra", as the letters "Q" and "Z" were not used on the old dial phones.
Read more about this topic: 555 (telephone Number)
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