The above photo was taken at Design Archives in Downtown Greensboro on South Elm Street. We are always looking for items of historic interest from Greensboro. The above cup "GUILFORD COUNTY EMPLOYEES' CREDIT UNION" (GCECU) fascinated us. We tried to research the credit union. So far, we have been unable to find a lead to this specific credit union. We'd love to know how long that credit union was in business, where the branches were located, and what replaced it. The next step was to sleuth out area codes, which change as population grows. Here is what we learned.
Area codes were first assigned in the United States in 1947. At that time, all of North Carolina was assigned area code 704. In 1954, as the population in the state grew, another zip code was added. The Greensboro area code became 919. The 919 area code was used in Greensboro from 1954 until 1993. Therefore, GCECU, on the cup above ( in the window of Design Archives), was in existence sometime in that 38 year time period. In 1993, Greensboro's area code switched to 910 and on December 15, 1997, a mere four years later, the area code switched to 336 and so it remains to this day. So, to recap, seeing a Greensboro phone number on an item can help you date it.
704 1947- 1953
919 1954-1992
910 1993- most of 1997
336 1997- today
Since April 23, 2016, using the 10-digit phone number has been mandatory for users of the 336 area code. Maybe you didn't get out of bed this morning planning to learn about Greensboro's area codes, but now you have it. Which area codes have you had? This post is brought to you thanks to a hard plastic cup for sale in Downtown Greensboro.
Happy Thursday!
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.