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How Rotary Phones Affected Area Codes
Friday, May 02, 2008
Image via WikipediaDid you ever wonder why a place like New York City got an area code like 212 and a place like Hawaii got an area code of 808? It boils down to one simple fact: the rotary phone and how fast you could dial it.
If you're under the age of 30, chances are you may not have used an old rotary phone. I grew up at a time where touch tone telephones were starting to become popular, but many of the older members of my family had an old rotary telephone.
If you want to see how to use an old rotary telephone, here's a nice introduction from YouTube from the 1920s which explains how to do it.
Prior to the introduction of direct dial service, telephone calls were made with the help of an operator. Larger cities were first to switch to this direct dial service with smaller cities coming along as time went on.
Notice something with the dial telephone. The larger the number, the longer it took for the dial to return back to it's original position. Larger numbers took longer to dial than shorter numbers.
Something else about area codes in the United States: the original rules for area codes were as follows: a digit 2-9 followed by either a zero or a one and then a digit 2-9. These rules have been long since abandoned, given the proliferation of telephone numbers and the advent of automated switching equipment.
What does this mean? The largest US city, New York, got the area code 212. It was the shortest to dial. The next shortest area codes to dial are 213 (Los Angeles) and 312 (Chicago), two other large, major cities.
Of course, these days, with touch tone phones, it doesn't take any longer to dial someone in Los Angeles than it does in North Carolina, which has the area code 919--the longest to dial on a rotary phone under the old rules. The nice thing is, it costs a heck of a lot less than it did back then, too!
