TreeHugger:

The recent death of John E Karlin of Bell Labs, the father of the push-button phone and other innovations, has sparked a lot of reminiscing about land line phones. According to the New York Times, Karlin was also “the most hated man in America” for killing the named exchanges (like Butterfield 8). However the story of how our phone numbers got to be the way they are is a much longer and more interesting one.

Fascinating story of the history of phone numbers.