Area code 321 in Brevard County, Florida is pretty interesting. It refers to the countdown sequence of the spacecrafts that launch from Cape Canaveral. 3...2...1... 🚀
I just looked it up, and it's true about the 321 area code. I'm moving from Brevard County this month but I should be able to keep the 321 on my cell phone.
When they split 606 (Kentucky), they used 859 for an area code in central and eastern Kentucky, which spells UKY (University of Kentucky - Go Big Blue!). Who says that Ma Bell never had a sense of humor? Of course Ma is dead now, eaten whole by her children (Verizon and AT&T)
Back then young women typically only worked until they got married unless they had a high tech or glamorous job, so they were usually young enough to be called “girls.” Thankfully, there were many exceptions, such as Grace Hopper, who joined the Navy with a math degree during WWII and helped build the field of computer science (and is known as the Mother of COBOL), retiring as a Rear Admiral.
I always enjoy Cheddar videos, but I feel that most of their video end kind of flat. It reminds me of when I was writing essays in middle school, "And, that's how dinosaurs would pay taxes if they were alive today."
And Pittsburgh also was assigned low digits (412) but its population is half of what it was when the system was devised. They had to add 724 because of the cell phone explosion.
Oklahoma's original area code, 405, came about as a result of the street address of the long-standing AT&T building: 405 North Broadway, Oklahoma City, OK.
@@lamarr912 The concept of local vs long distance went out a long time ago. I don't have a land line, just a cell phone, so everything is 1-907-XXX-XXXX anywhere in the state. Even if I'm calling my next door neighbor.
@@anonymouscommenter2278 541 dates from after 1996 (the first code without a 0 or 1 in the middle debuted that year). Before that there was just 503 sitting comfortably between 916 and 206.
@@jennyjohn704 The way a phone dial is configured, at the end of the stroke you are usually pulling the hole you placed your finger in towards you or downward. As you dial larger numbers, the force of the spring gets larger, so you need the extra leverage from pulling rather than pushing the dial ring. I guess it depends on the geometry of your hand, arm, and phone whether your dialing motion ends with a pull or a push. Which is why we usually just use the verb "dial".
I apologize for the rude Americans in the comments. It is dumb that they didn't use a map with Canada included. I actually went to Vancouver last month, Canada is a nice place. - A Californian
As a 38 year veteran I can tell you it wasn't the convenience of the subscriber that determined the numbers. It was the time that the originating equipment was held to register the total pulses. It was TERMINATING area code that was important since millions of subscribers all over the country would be dialing it. Tens of thousands of dollars in switching equipment was saved using this strategy.
Originally, the middle digit of the area code also indicated whether a state had one area code for the whole state (say, 505 for all of New Mexico) or if a state had multiple area codes (such as 916, 415, and 213 for California). Now, the middle digit can be any number.
Fun fact when Alexander Graham bell invented the telephone, he didn’t know what to say when answering it He considered ahoy, Horary, even tapping the receiver on the table until someone answered him by saying hello lol
Also, while "Ahoy-hoy" sounds funny to us now, "Hello" actually wasn't really in common use as a greeting then either, and was popularized by the telephone. (It was used as a way to get attention - and can still used that way in some languages, like German - owing to its likely maritime origins as a way of calling to a ferryman.)
This makes more sense now when Seinfeld had their whole episode of Elane getting assigned a new area code/ phone number and everyone was weirded out by it and didn't know where she lived.
CannabisCultureTechLife That split in NY was a *very* big deal. There was a certain sense of prestige with the 212 area code and some people were *pissed* that they had to switch. People in the 90s cared about the weirdest shit lol
myowncomputerstuff, I do believe people from Staten Island prefer to refer for their county name of Richmond... (from a 212 [NYC] native living in 939 [PR])
I grew up in Miami, FL with a 305 area code. Now I live in Portland, OR with a 503 area code. I always wondered why they were the reverse of each other.
Fun fact, 503 is also the area code for the entire country of El Salvador, except they use 11-digit phone numbers, not 10, to differentiate (i.e. 503-xxxx-xxxx)
One issue you could have mentioned is that States that had only one area code had a code with the middle digit of "0." States that had multiple codes in 1948 used a "1" as the middle digit. That design feature went away when the need for new codes expanded. But you can look at the largest city in some States (like Florida) to see that its 305 probably applied to the entire State since larger population centers tend to keep their original numbers.
@@ilipan2668 neither of which are really explained in the video, which only really explains area codes from back when all area codes had to have a 0 or 1 as the middle digit.
There are a few inaccuracies in this but it gives you a general idea. Dial service & Switching equipment was invented well before the 1940s, It was area codes that were brought on in the 40s. Los Angeles area code was and is 213 not 313. And the word is pulses not pulls on the rotary dial.
Pulses within a digit; (finger) pulls for a digit. With practice, you can dial a number with the switchhook, since all exchanges support both tone and pulse dialing.
"Now, everybody from the 313 Put your muthafuking hands up and follow me! Everybody from the 313 Put your muthafuking hands up! Look, look... Now, while he stands tough Notice that this man did not have his hands up"
I still remember my ("late") grandmother's 1st phone number in 1945.I was 6years old .they never moved or changed to a different phone. Every time that "ma bell" changed their number, they were " grumbely " for a while whenever they had to Adapt to the changes that went like this: Charleston 28892 CH 28892 382 8892 My memory gets foggy about Here, and I don't remember the area code for Burbank, CA in the 1960's and the 70's. That really took me back! I hope that you have a little fun with this!
SWes608 its actually in the song “So control your whoremones and keep your drawers on 'Til I close the door and I'm jumping your bones 3-1-2, 3-1-3, 2-1-5, 8-0-3”
3:40 "3-digit codes, out of a possible 152" Why would there only be 152 possible 3-digit codes? Even if you can't use the same digit twice in a row, or can't use 0 or 1 as the first digit or something, that still seems like a small number when there are 1000 3-digit numbers.
Initially, you didn't dial a 1 before calling outside of your Area Code. In order to make it so that the system could tell the difference between an Area Code and a phone prefix (first three digits of a seven digit phone number) Area Codes could only have a 0 or a 1 in the middle digit, and prefixes could NOT have a 0 or 1 in the middle digit. They ended that convention in the 1980s, as it was no longer necessary after we started the "Dial 1" convention) to allow for more telephone numbers in each Area Code and to allow more Area Codes in total.
The eight codes of the form N11 (where N = 2-9) were reserved as service codes. Additional area code patterns were later assigned for other services; for example, the area codes N10 were implemented for the Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX).
Its a legacy left over from an earlier time before the time when you had to dial a "one" before the area code. Plus there are some numbers that are reserved for other uses, for example 911 and 411.
I'm curious if with the rise of cell phones as peoples' *only* phone number, and the decline of extra lines for specific purposes (fax machines, pagers, modems, etc,) if the timeline for "running out of numbers" has changed. Back in the '90s, when I came back to my parents' house from college, there were seven phone numbers in the house - the main voice line, my teenager-years second line (which my parents got rid of a few years later,) a dedicated modem line (my dad worked from home often enough to need to dial in, and I was in to BBSes, then early internet connections,) my dad's pager, my dad's cell phone, my cell phone, and my pager. Now when I visit, there are only four lines - they still have the same main home line, simply because they've had it for 40 years, and lots of their family only know it; my dad's cell phone, my mom's cell phone, and my cell phone. And that was just numbers at the house itself (when all people were present) - my parents each had at least 3 phone numbers at work, *NOT* counting the cell phone and pagers! At my house, we've gone from six phone lines in 2006 to three now. (2006: Home, second home that was the dial-up internet line but we kept for a while after moving to high-speed as a fax line, home-based business landline, my cell, wife's cell, kid's cell. Now: One cell phone each for me, wife, kid.) Realized that we didn't need a separate line for the business, and my wife ported our old home number to her cell phone. I would imagine that late '90s to early '00s was the peak of "phone numbers per person" because of all those other uses, with it dropping to the point where it will be one number per person soon. (Slightly more as people do have business lines still.) But even at 3 lines per person, we still have plenty of numbers.
NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, constantly revises the exhaustion estimates. Each Area Code has a predicted exhaustion date, as well as the system overall. The date we were to run out of phone numbers in all Area Codes has been pushed back several times due to policy changes that allowed more numbers to be reused or conserved, and also due to changing usage trends. We are still using increasingly more phone numbers, but the rate of increase has declined in recent times. As we approach that exhaust date, expect further policy changes to help put it off as long as possible, as changing to a different numbering plan will be incredibly expensive and disruptive.
@@TrevorHammonds at issue would be the fact that back in the day there was one phone number for a household. Now each person in the house has their own phone and phone number.
But there are many households that have gone the other direction. In 2000, my house had exactly one phone number. Now there are 8. Four family members now have their own cell phone, plus a Google voice number.
US population is now about 335 million and no more than 670 million active US phone numbers currently, so on average two numbers per person. There is supposed to be about 8 billion possible 10 digit phone number combinations (can't have 911 anywhere in the number, no 411 or 555 area codes, 0 can't be 4th digit, etc) so in theory we could have billions in population before we have to worry about it? By the time that happens, if ever, maybe we'll have mind control dialing or something, and no more phone numbers at all.
Businesses still use fax lines, and the rise of free number services like Google Voice mean it's easy and cheap to have multiple numbers. The other problem is in the past, one had to get a new number when they moved, now one can keep the same number for life. That means numbers get reshuffled less and less and new numbers must be used.
One thing not mentioned in the video is the area codes originally had only a 0 or 1 as the second digit. Local exchanges used 2-9 as the second digit. This allowed 7 digit dialing within the local area. The computer looked at the second digit to decide whether it was a local or LD call. This went away in the early 90's they ran out of area code combinations that used 0 or 1 as the second digit. That forced all the phone companies to implement 10 digit dialing for everyone.
So where does 5 digit dialing come in? In the mid 80's, we could dial a local number with just the last 5 digits. That changed somewhere around 1990 ish.
@@dugroz I'm not certain, but it sounds like it would be a unique local exchange thing. As far back as I can remember, we used 7 digits (1970's) where I grew up. I suppose it is possible that a local exchange could have a batch of numbers with only one prefix and the 2nd and 4th digits were neither 0 nor 1 to allow the shortcut. This seems like it would cause the exchange to be limited to a pretty small pool of phone numbers however. This wikipedia article talks about non-7 digit dialing being rare and phased out in the early 80's. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-digit_dialing
I remember when Los Angeles’ 213 area code split in 1984, I was 8 years old. It’s crazy to realize that every subsequent split of the one SoCal area code all happened in such a short span of time after that.
She’s a 336? Nice. I’m familiar with that area. I’m nostalgic for my 828 area code, even though I live in the 704-980 overlay, which now covers the Charlotte metro, but used to cover all of NC. Now NC has 828, 336, 919, 984, 910, and 252. 803 covers a large part of the southern suburbs of Charlotte in South Carolina.
Fascinating! In the UK around 1999/2000 we had a 1 put in our area code whilst london and other large cities redid their area code completely. Our area codes used to be 4 digits and are now 5.
That map at 3:43 is interesting because it also shows the population shift that has happened since the 1950's. All southern states (save TX) have 1 area code. Iowa had 3!
Florida with only one area code in 1947? I find that hard to believe. As for Texas, the state as a whole had only four area codes; now, there are five area codes which cover the immediate Dallas/Fort Worth area (Dallas and Tarrant Counties).
Until the 80’s or 90’s the second digit of area codes could only be 0 or 1, whereas the second digit of phone numbers could NOT be 0 or 1. That has gone out the window and now we can use any number on the second digit position
Also in the original plan, states that only had 1 area code used a 0 in the middle and states with multiple area codes had a 1 in the middle. Pennsylvania had 4 area codes (215, 412, 717, and 814) so they all had 1 as the middle digit. New Jersey originally only had 1 area code (201) so it got a 0 as the middle digit.
RaymondHng The whole State/partial state (or province) rule was abandoned (more like relaxed tbf) in the 1950s but having an area code with 2-9 as the second digit wasn’t until the 1990s... analog equipment depended on that rule.
I grew up in Grover's Mill, NJ, which has a 609 area code, back in the 1960s. Whenever my grandmother used to call us, as soon as you picked up the phone, you knew it was her, because she was calling from her 201 area code (Manasquan) and a long-distance phone call like that in those days had a certain scratchiness quality to the line--even though the "long-distance" was only about 40 miles! 😀❤
Bell Company had the area codes similar for far away populations because they used to have long distance charges, and with thousands of minor slips per day, phone company made tons
They also used economic and political factors, not just population, to determine the numbering. Otherwise, if population alone was used, Washington, DC would not have been assigned 202.
@@elocinaqui24 It's not just the suburbs of DC and MD that have 301...Garrett County, the westernmost county in MD, also uses 301, as does Allegany, Washington, and Frederick Counties
Here in Montreal we'v had 514 as long as iv been around. But we had to add a second code 438 to accommodate growth. When I changed providers I had to change my number and I got a new 438 number. But recently I changed providers again and this time they had a 514 number available. I took it right away. I'm back in the original area code gang!
What bothers me is that in a era where you can take your phone number with you, and everyone you talk to can potentially have a different area code, people will still frequently leave off the area code when reciting their number. What bothers me even more than that are A) The people that do give their whole number find it necessary to add the "1", as if that's not implied, and B) Some antiquated phone systems still require you dial it. For example, if I have to call home from work (no cell phone allowed) I have to dial 9 to get out, then 1, then the area code, and then the number. Even calling locally, I still have to dial 1 and the area code. Whereas on my cell phone, I don't have to use any of that unless I'm calling outside my local area. And I never ever have to dial 1. Except on antiquated phones like the one at my work.
That's a holdover from when cellular phones were first implemented. You don't have to dial the initial 1 because there is a send button. The system knows you have finished dialing and can figure out how to route the call. On a landline, the system needed the 1 to differentiate between dialing a local seven-digit call or a long distance call. The landline equipment would start routing immediately as you dial, rather than waiting for all the digits to be received. It's the way the system worked and it saved time while you were manually dialing. Now, it remains that way for convention, and to avoid a delay after you've stopped dialling when dialling fewer than 10 digits, as there is no send button.
@Richard Head good question. I don't know if telephone operators still exist today. I do remember people who would call directory assistance every day, and we even had one woman who would call the operator to place ALL of her phone calls, even local ones.
They exist, but not in the same way anymore. Most of the time operators are either for 411 information services or for collect call services (mostly for jails or international collect calls) Yes. People still sometimes make collect calls. Usually from airports or from gas stations.
I've been to Georgia as an exchange student. I had 704 lol, when I saw 706 in the thumbnail I expected like a neighbor city or something haha Here in germany every city has a 4-5 digit code (depending on size usually, smaller means bigger city) and the first two numbers are from an area and the last 2 or 3 are for the city. So I know from the first two digits from which state the caller could be or that area. This is only for landlines though. Mobile phones are something different. The second to fourth digits are from the phone company. So you know that 0176 is probably vodafone. (always with a leading 0)
Some major cities have a three digit code, such as Frankfurt/Main with 069. But yeah, great system in my eyes, as a vague idea of how the country is split up, lets you roughly know if you may know the caller or not!
When I was stationed in South Korea, each cell phone company had their own "area code". I once heard that cell phone companies wanted to do the same thing here, but congress wouldn't let them. I've had the same Southwest Missouri phone number for over 10 years, even tho I haven't lived in the 417 since 2011.
Fifteen years ago the exchange (first three numbers after area code) was owned by the cell phone company. They leased specific exchanges for their brand from ATT. This was back in the days when it was illegal to market to cell phones and all cell phones were unlisted numbers. It made it tons easier to exclude cell phones for marketing when specific exchanges where used only by cell phone companies. Now it's a mish mash since phone numbers can be ported to different carriers. Fifteen years ago you couldn't do that. Each number was proprietary to the carrier.
Here in NL, all cell phone numbers start with 06 (for the area code) so everybody calling that knows they are calling a cell phone, in USA you have no idea if it is a landline or not, therefore the billing system is different. Not sure if it it still that way, but I hated having to pay for someone calling me. Here that never happens.
Baltimore has 410, 443, and 301. There may be another. I've also noticed that certain neighborhoods have the same 3 numbers after the area code. Lots of places in dundalk have a 288 number, the Paterson park area has 722 and butchers hill 522.
Was generally true for landlines everywhere in the US. Where I grew up, all telephone numbers started with "88", more precisely, 881, 882, 884, 885 and 886 (883, 887, and 888 were elsewhere in the area code). Furthermore, most people would give their phone number as TUxedo 1-2345 (for example).
I’m a bit of an area code nerd. At 3:25 it’s mentioned that there was an attempt to distance similar area codes when they were first issued, but an exception exists with the original area codes of Louisiana (504) and Oklahoma (405) which were separated by less than 80 miles. Another interesting thing is that all area codes with “0” as the middle digit were originally used for their entire state; states with multiple area codes originally had “1” as the middle digits. It wasn’t until 1995 that the first area codes appeared with middle digits other than “0” or “1.”
@@petergray2712 yeah there are a bunch of these interstates that do that. I-96 is entirely in the south peninsula of Michigan, and I-89 only goes between NH and VT (into QC Canada)
@@NazbolCaliphDonaldaddeenTrump It goes from coast to coast! ...of Florida. It's roughly Sanford to Tampa. But yeah, like my beloved I-87 and eastern I-88, it's only an intrastate.
You're likely in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Dallas became a much bigger deal soon after the original designations, so Forth Worth got 817 early on while Dallas hung onto 214. Remember also that this is before all-digital (contactless) switching, which is what allowed area codes with something other than zero or one in the middle digit. That change wasn't until the late 1980s, when 781 (metro Boston) and 281 (outer Houston) broke the mould after San Antonio got one of the last semi-original codes: 210. The map also misses some important area codes from the original. 914 and 716 got skipped in New York state, for example. DC's 202 isn't even a line. Oh, and Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_NANP_area_codes for the full list
They missed the part where the old switching equipment knew it was an area code over an exchange was that all initial area codes in the NANP had the middle digit a "1" or a "0". Modern switching equipment didn't have that limitation so when they ran out of the original area codes, they could start using number other than 0 and 1 for the middle digit.
You also missed that all the original area codes had a 0 or 1 as the middle digit (and local exchanges, did not). Once those were exausted, we had to switch to 1+AC dialing as the way to differentiate Local Exchange vs AC. My first phone number: BOonton-8-0187-W, which changed to DEerfield 4-3618 when Dial phones came to town
The reason for that is that no local numbers then had a 1 or 0 in the first two digits, since they had to be the first two letters of a word (a popular movie in the 1950s was “BUtterfield 8,” the beginning of a character’s telephone number, which coincidentally are the numbers for ATT). So dialing only a 0 reached the operator to make a long distance call. But many local exchanges were still mechanical, and could not store an entire number to parse it into area code, exchange, etc. They had to commit to a switching path based on the digits already received. So if the first digit dialed was 0, the system would wait for another digit. If nothing came for several seconds you got the operator for assistance with a local or long distance call. If another 0, you still got the operator (after 1984, when you could choose a separate long distance company, 00 got the LOCAL company operator). If the first 0 was followed by a 1, that was an error. If it was followed by a digit 2-9, it was the beginning of an area code OR a 7-digit number in the same area code. If the third digit was also a digit 2-9, it WAS in the same area code, and after 5 more digits it would ring the operator and display the 7 digits. If the third digit was a 0, it was an area code, and after 8 more digits it would ring the operator and display the area code and number. Since a long distance call had a toll charge, the operator handled person to person (I don’t want to pay if I can’t speak to Joe, but I’m willing to pay more if I can), collect (will Joe pay for me to call him?), and credit card calls (yep, they had those for travelers). But if the first digit dialed was 1, the same logic determined whether you were directly dialing a local or long distance number in the same area code (then the first 3 digits of the number would route the call to the correct local exchange), or a call to a different area code (routing the call to that area code). Then you got connected without an operator (at station to station rates; you were charged for the call if anyone answered). And that’s why the original area codes had a 1 or 0 in the middle and any other digit on either side of it. Except for special area codes like 800 or 900, and special numbers like 411 (separating operators who looked up numbers from operators who helped make calls) and 911. This is why the US network didn’t follow the U.K. in using 999 for emergencies; there were probably actual numbers here beginning with those digits (XYlophone 9-1234?), and 911 fit in with the logic for detecting area codes vs local numbers. Oh, and the map is wrong about Florida too. The first area code map showed all of Florida as 305 EXCEPT the area down the Gulf Coast from somewhere north of Tampa down the middle of the peninsula to Florida Bay (I don’t remember if the western part of the Keys were included; probably not, for wiring reasons), which was 813 (most of Hillsborough County is still 813). Why? Because the local provider there was GTE (now Verizon), so they got their own area code.
How about this system: State prefix - county prefix - number e.g Someone in Manhattan 01 - 01 - 12345678 Someone in Queens 01 - 02 - 12345678 Someone in LA 02 - 01 - 12345678 Emergency services 9x - xx
Issues: Seven US states have 100 or more counties, so two digits there isn't quite enough. Eight digits for the actual number would permit 100,000,000 numbers per county, which is probably more than needed. But most significantly with the obsolescence of landlines, there's little point to basing numbers on geography at all.
USA has 50 states, 1 district, 6 outlying areas. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories. This makes it 70 codes from 01-70, and 19 free codes from 71-89. So if there are less than 19 regions with more than 100 counties, then those can have two prefixes, splitting the region east-west or north-south. The remaining prefixes are for future use.
The reason NYC (now Manhattan) was assigned 212 is sort-of mentioned in the video, but a better explanation is this: The original computers that routed called were (and still are) called Switches. Each switch can only make so many connections simultaneously. The switch has to listen to the area code before starting to make the connection. The faster the user could input the number, the more less time it too to listen, and the less time it took to make the connection. This meant that each switch could handle more calls if the listening time was short, so they made the areas with the most long distance calls the shortest for a rotary dial phone to make.
"They made sure to put a lot of geographic distance between numerically similar numbers" - so that when you misdialed and got the wrong number halfway across the country, they could charge you long-distance rates.
Right? But, back when, I'm sure a tiny part of that logic was also that you'd rather hear a more pleasant female voice than have a man make your connection. And women were cheaper to hire, because...... well... yeah. Though, it's not _too_ hard a reach to try to think of reasons outside outright sexism why operators were generally female. The existing male labor pool having existing jobs when this boom was happening definitely had a part of it, though. Still, things sure have changed.
@@Giatros89 Interesting. I never thought to research the history of sexist language, since I was there and witnessed all of it. I got this, knowing exactly what I would get by googling doonesbury baby woman: i.pinimg.com/originals/f4/7c/af/f47caf29576cc58a85deb1e0c2ea183c.gif from 1973. edit: I should probably qualify "all of it". From the sixties onward, the rise of modern (baby boomer) feminism.
In Singapore, they ran out of numbers in the early 2000s. In 2002, actually, they added 6 to landline phones so 733-4533 became 6733-4533. Mobile Numbers were given a 9. So 333-1111 became 9333-1111. They could also add 2-5, 7 and 8 and have a lot more numbers.
So in Virginia it used to be all 703, up until some point in the last half decade, you have 703 and 571 in Northern VA, Central VA has 434 and 540, Southern VA has 804 and 757.. what's more incredible is of your in the Northern VA area and you have say 703-494 you can figure out exactly about where you are calling or 703-491 for that matter and it's rather interesting
The principal (longest) highways end in 5 (odd, north-south) or 0 (even, east-west). Intermediate odd or even numbers are for shorter routes like the 8 in your example. But 4 is the lowest; it connects 75 in Tampa to 95 in Daytona, going through Orlando (AKA Mouse Country). Even if you’ve never been to Florida, you must have heard election night reporters refer to the swing part of the swing state of Florida as the “I-4 Corridor.”
Very interesting. I wonder how much interest there would be in a video on the old Party Lines (GODDAMNIT JUDY HANG UP! The call is for us) or why early numbers had a letter at the end. And yes, I can remember both of those. ;-)
The letter suffix on the party line phone number identified the side of the line which rang that phone on the line. On manual switching, the operator would know which side of the party circuit the phone's ringer was connected. Many times the letter was followed by another number, which indicated the ringing code(i.e. 2 long, one short) of the phone being called.
@@rayfridley6649 I remember that the numbers in our area had either a "T" for tip or an "R" for ring in our area but had forgotten that the number of rings told which phone the call was for. Just about every party line had one busybody that picked up every call to listen in. On our line Judy listened to every ones calls until some of the neighborhood men threatened to beat the hell out of her husband if he didn't "persuade" her to stop picking up everyone's calls and listening in. lol
TheSweetOldMan In this case “ring” refers to the outer conductor on the phone plug (the standard headphone plug is a miniature version of the old 1/4” plug), and “tip” refers to the onion shaped tip of the plug which latches into the Jack. Most plugs today have two “ring” conductors, but back then they only had one. The terminology is still used in the phone business, where electricians say “hot” and “neutral” or “ground.”
I had a suggestion back before they changed the rule on Area Codes where the middle digit of had to be 1 or 0 and Prefixes couldn't have a 1 or 0, that instead of doing away with that, they should have changed from 7 digit number "local numbers" to 9 digits. This made more sense because most people think of numbers in groups of three digits each, this is why Area Codes and Prefixes are 3 digits each. In other words, 800-555-1212 is thought as 800 (first group) 555 (second group) 121 (third group) and 2xx (4th group) with the xx being failed digits. If they had gone to a 9 digit local number that would have increased the pool of available numbers in an area code 100 fold. They never would have had to do away with the original rule that area codes middle digit had to be a 1 or 0 and prefixes couldn't have a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. Now that this video is saying they are contemplating adding another digit to the area code, I am bringing up my suggestion again.
617 doesn't have as much caché now that mobile phones are, well, mobile + once your contact is plugged into your mobile, the user never really sees any of the 10-digits again
What you call Area Codes were originally internal TelCo routing codes. You would get the operator and tell her you wanted long distance. She would connect you to another operator who would say "Long Distance for what city?" She would contact the "Inward Operator for that city (NY,NY" by dialing 212-121. (Inward was always area code + 121). The Inward Operator would complete your connection.
No one in recent comments have talked about The Simpons particular area code (939) they got in that years ago episode. We, in Puerto Rico, got that particular area code just a couple of years after the episode debuted Stateside. It's layered only for us with wireless lines (Including my own smartphone) and complements our 787, which was given to the Island after the old 809 that was for the whole Caribbean was given to just the Dominican Republic (they got 1-2 more now). Some people still call to the Island thinking they're calling someone in Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), FL. Their main code is 786, very close to our 787 landline and old wireless code...
This was a pretty sloppy episode. No mention of the fact that it's not just the US and Canada in the system. No mention of the restricted middle digits earlier in the system. No mention of the special non-geographic "area" codes. Wildly and obviously incorrect statistic given for the resulting number of possible three digit area codes. At the end, no elaboration of how inserting a 9 in (all?) the area codes help anything.
Area Code expansion can possibly entail preserving all existing phone numbers and just inserting a 9 as the second digit in all Area Codes. This would make all Area Codes four digits and allow for millions of additional phone numbers. However, there are several things that can and will be done before this is even considered. Changing the numbering plan for all of North America will be incredibly costly and disruptive. We will not be doing so any time soon, if ever.
Growing up in New Mexico, I remember when the geographic majority of the state was switched to 575 instead of 505 which is now the area code for the central part of the state including Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Also, I never knew that 915 used to cover so much of Texas, including the panhandle. I've always known it as mainly El Paso County's area code, and it has since became widely associated as part of EPTX's identity.
Here in Northern Alabama, I've had BOTH an area code split AND an overlay. I moved to Huntsville in 1997 and had area code 205. In 1998 Northern AL was moved to area code 256, and in 2010 we got the overlay code of 938. Interestingly, or not, I have yet to see any listings or advertisements using the 938 area code.
When cell phones started growing in number, I wonder why they didn't just create new area codes for them. That way you'd know if you were calling a cell phone, and cell phones geography doesn't matter as much.
karlinchina idk i find it most common where i'm from for landlines to have a 301 area code and newer cell phones tend to use the overlaid 240 area code. it's not 100% accurate but it's solid way to guess if the number you're dialing is a mobile phone or not.
They tried that at first. But people sued because it was felt to be discriminatory at the the time. People were scared to dial unfamiliar area codes for fear of huge long distance bills. It wasn't so much a problem with geographical splits - when 213 got split to 213 and 818, everyone near the area code border knew lots of people with both numbers, so they knew where that number sorta was. But with overlays, especially when they're still relatively new, a lot of people were afraid and upset by them. Cell phone companies didn't want their customers to suffer that stigma, they were worried it would discourage people from getting cell phones (or beepers, which were big back then).
@dandanthetaximan beeper (also known as a pager). essentially they were little quasi-text messaging devices, you could send them a 10 digit number (generally, the number you wanted the recipient to call you back on), and the recipient's device would beep and then display the number sent to it. They had some popularity at one point, but were mainly used by doctors and drug dealers.
Just to add some a little more info to the story, when the area codes first started the second digit was either a 1 or 0. The one was assigned to the largest cities in the US at the time and to shorten the dialing time (as mentioned in the video). The zero was assigned for more rural areas or less populated areas.
In the original 1947 numbering plan, states that had only 1 area code assigned to them had a zero in the middle. States with more than one area code had a "1".
As someone who lives in New Hampshire, where the entire state has a single area code, and always has had the same area code, I am so glad that I don't have to deal with this.
Same as the layout of your keyboard. It once made perfect sense. Too late to change it now. The Earth would grind to a halt if you tried to. What would be really funny would be if you were really Kim watching TH-cam videos while trying to decide who to execute next. lol
Notice that no area codes begin with 1. The reason is that many businesses use an old PBX internal telephone system that requires dialing (or pressing) 9 for an outside line. If it's necessary to then press 1 (the USA international long distance country code), pressing 1 again to begin the area code activates emergency services.
415 was one of the original three area codes in California, established in 1947. It originally covered central California, south of area code 916 and north of area code 213. It stretched from Sacramento in the north to Bakersfield in the south. In 1950, 415 was expanded along the North Coast to the Oregon border and shortened in the south, while 916 was rotated to cover the northeastern corner of the state. As part of this realignment, Sacramento was shifted from 415 to 916, while Bakersfield moved to 213. Area 415 has been split three times due to the Bay Area's rapid expansion: On March 1, 1959, area code 408 was created for San Jose and the South Bay. (408 has since been split to 831 and overlaid with 669.) On September 2, 1991, area code 510 was created for the East Bay, including Oakland. (510 has since been split to 925 and will be overlaid by 341 in 2019.) On August 2, 1997, area code 650 was created; the partition approximately followed the boundary between San Francisco, which (along with Marin County) kept 415, and San Mateo County to the south, which received the new code. Deviations from the county line were a very small area east of the San Francisco Golf Club, which was changed to 650, and portions of Brisbane and Daly City, which retained area code 415. On February 21, 2015, area code 628 was assigned as an overlay for new numbers in the 415 territory, making ten-digit dialing mandatory in the area. 415 had been one of the few urban area codes that had not been overlaid, making San Francisco one of the largest cities where seven-digit dialing still functioned.
303 originally now 303,720,719,970 720+719+970=2409 4 area codes 2409/4=602 3+0+3=6 720 and 719 have a difference of 0 in the hundreds place=0 2 area codes for city and 2 for rural=2 3 digits illuminati confirmed
@@MCatwar Originally born in 212... Brooklyn went to 718 in 1985, and now you got 347, 929, and 646 in the mix. That doesn't include Long Island(516 and later 631 as well), nor does it include Westchester/Rockland(914/845).
![แฉกลโกงงานวัด 2024 [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.106 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/taC5dpP3HXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Area code 321 in Brevard County, Florida is pretty interesting. It refers to the countdown sequence of the spacecrafts that launch from Cape Canaveral.
3...2...1... 🚀
Transit Xan best Comment I've seen all Spring anywhere on TH-cam, thank you for that fun fact
I have a funny feeling that's the joke!
I just looked it up, and it's true about the 321 area code. I'm moving from Brevard County this month but I should be able to keep the 321 on my cell phone.
REALLY???
When they split 606 (Kentucky), they used 859 for an area code in central and eastern Kentucky, which spells UKY (University of Kentucky - Go Big Blue!). Who says that Ma Bell never had a sense of humor? Of course Ma is dead now, eaten whole by her children (Verizon and AT&T)
You know it's old-school when he says " we figured out we wouldn't be able find enough girls"
Back then young women typically only worked until they got married unless they had a high tech or glamorous job, so they were usually young enough to be called “girls.”
Thankfully, there were many exceptions, such as Grace Hopper, who joined the Navy with a math degree during WWII and helped build the field of computer science (and is known as the Mother of COBOL), retiring as a Rear Admiral.
Yes "back then" and "once upon a time" AKA "old school"
#CasualSexism
oh boy here I go being sexist and a segregator again!
-U.S.A in the 20th century
So, anything telco or techy related has always had trouble gathering up 'nuff of thems femalien persuasions... ;]
I always enjoy Cheddar videos, but I feel that most of their video end kind of flat.
It reminds me of when I was writing essays in middle school, "And, that's how dinosaurs would pay taxes if they were alive today."
This explains how I feel PERFECTLY!!
Dinosaurs aren't alive today?
They are informative, but they definitely feel like they are aimed for a middle school or high school level audience.
They would kill the humans to not pay taxes.
The videos have very interesting themes, but they don't encourage any type of thinking about the topics after you finish watching them
3:09 Detroit is 313, Detroit used to be the 3rd largest city in America btw
And Pittsburgh also was assigned low digits (412) but its population is half of what it was when the system was devised. They had to add 724 because of the cell phone explosion.
I got a 313 number
It used to, but it’s not
I noticed too lol “that’s Detroit, not LA” 😬
Yes, LA is 213
Sometimes area codes can describe what a particular area is known for. The area around Cape Canaveral has the area code 321.
James Mcenanly These are just IRL easter eggs
And Atlanta is 404, the web code for page not found, because it’s so easy to get lost there.
JK it’s just a coincidence.
Oklahoma's original area code, 405, came about as a result of the street address of the long-standing AT&T building: 405 North Broadway, Oklahoma City, OK.
All of Alaska is still 907. Been that way all my life.
exactly what I was thinking about Vermont's 802 :)
AlaskaErik All of Maine is 207, but they say it’s going to run out soon
In y’all’s case, is every call considered local statewide?
@@lamarr912 The concept of local vs long distance went out a long time ago. I don't have a land line, just a cell phone, so everything is 1-907-XXX-XXXX anywhere in the state. Even if I'm calling my next door neighbor.
Montana hasn’t changed from 406 since they got it but that’s what I heard. I’m from Georgia and our area code is 229 but it used to be 912
At 3:12 (I see what you did there), you said 312 and 313, when it would be 312 for Chicago and 213 for LA.
I was going to say 313 was assigned to Eastern Michigan, now it's mostly just Detroit that uses it.
Correct, I actually came here to correct this as well - 313 is Detroit. Anyone who's seen 8 Mile knows this.
@@leaguemaskthaamumugod7552 DisRESPEKT
She even says six poles(?) on the rotary dial, when 3+1+3=7, not six.
The loop or downtown Chicago is 312 but rest of Chicago is 773
My area code is 919, the amount of times I’ve dialed 999 or 911 is really embarrassing
hello fellow Raleigh citizen
Also hello from Raleigh!
910 reporting in
Did anyone else notice she said her area code is 336? Right out of the Triad here in NC
910 here, I feel your pain
"they made sure to put a lot of geographic distance between numerically similar numbers."
*Glares at 703 and 704*
And 206 and 208.
Area code 541 is between 503 and 530.
@@anonymouscommenter2278 541 dates from after 1996 (the first code without a 0 or 1 in the middle debuted that year). Before that there was just 503 sitting comfortably between 916 and 206.
In Georgia, 706 is divided into two, and 470 is right next to 478.
All area codes were dialed with three 'pulls,' it's the number of pulses that varied.
What she meant was the number of segments on the rotation. The 1 is 1 segment from the rest segment, the 2 is 2 segments away, so 212 is 2+1+2, etc.
She's saying "poles." The number of the poles matches the number on dial which generates the pulses.
You didn't 'pull' a dial, you pushed it.
@@jennyjohn704 The way a phone dial is configured, at the end of the stroke you are usually pulling the hole you placed your finger in towards you or downward. As you dial larger numbers, the force of the spring gets larger, so you need the extra leverage from pulling rather than pushing the dial ring.
I guess it depends on the geometry of your hand, arm, and phone whether your dialing motion ends with a pull or a push. Which is why we usually just use the verb "dial".
Mentions Canada is part of the system but can't be bothered to use a map showing Canada and the U.S.
Bro, that’s because no one cares about Canada.
pudgeUSAF America Fuck ya !!!!
Rip Canada
It's just a hat
I apologize for the rude Americans in the comments. It is dumb that they didn't use a map with Canada included. I actually went to Vancouver last month, Canada is a nice place.
- A Californian
As a 38 year veteran I can tell you it wasn't the convenience of the subscriber that determined the numbers. It was the time that the originating equipment was held to register the total pulses. It was TERMINATING area code that was important since millions of subscribers all over the country would be dialing it. Tens of thousands of dollars in switching equipment was saved using this strategy.
Originally, the middle digit of the area code also indicated whether a state had one area code for the whole state (say, 505 for all of New Mexico) or if a state had multiple area codes (such as 916, 415, and 213 for California). Now, the middle digit can be any number.
Fun fact when Alexander Graham bell invented the telephone, he didn’t know what to say when answering it
He considered ahoy, Horary, even tapping the receiver on the table until someone answered him by saying hello lol
Fun fact, Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the telephone !
I prefer "Ahoy-hoy?" Al la Mr. Burns.
@@DugrozReports That was actually what Bell favored. And it did catch on in one place: "Ahoj" is how people answer the phone in Czech.
Also, while "Ahoy-hoy" sounds funny to us now, "Hello" actually wasn't really in common use as a greeting then either, and was popularized by the telephone. (It was used as a way to get attention - and can still used that way in some languages, like German - owing to its likely maritime origins as a way of calling to a ferryman.)
Like in Italian "Pronto" which mean ready
This makes more sense now when Seinfeld had their whole episode of Elane getting assigned a new area code/ phone number and everyone was weirded out by it and didn't know where she lived.
CannabisCultureTechLife That split in NY was a *very* big deal. There was a certain sense of prestige with the 212 area code and some people were *pissed* that they had to switch. People in the 90s cared about the weirdest shit lol
4:07 "while Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn, [and that other borough]"
really funny they forgot the forgotten borough
Rip Staten island
No respect.
Why wats wrong with Staten island
myowncomputerstuff, I do believe people from Staten Island prefer to refer for their county name of Richmond... (from a 212 [NYC] native living in 939 [PR])
I grew up in Miami, FL with a 305 area code. Now I live in Portland, OR with a 503 area code. I always wondered why they were the reverse of each other.
Same!
Fun fact, 503 is also the area code for the entire country of El Salvador, except they use 11-digit phone numbers, not 10, to differentiate (i.e. 503-xxxx-xxxx)
@@elocinaqui24 For El Salvador, 503 is not the "area code", but the country code. Area codes are for sub-country units.
I live nearly 180 miles away from Portland and my area code is 541
Why did you give up sunny Florida for rainy Portland?
One issue you could have mentioned is that States that had only one area code had a code with the middle digit of "0." States that had multiple codes in 1948 used a "1" as the middle digit. That design feature went away when the need for new codes expanded. But you can look at the largest city in some States (like Florida) to see that its 305 probably applied to the entire State since larger population centers tend to keep their original numbers.
313 is/has always been Detroit not LA...
@@MCLWforever PROBABLY MEANT 213 which is L.A.
@@AskMiko I think it's 312.
LA is 213. The Western suburbs like Hollywood and Beverly Hills are 323.
@@ilipan2668 neither of which are really explained in the video, which only really explains area codes from back when all area codes had to have a 0 or 1 as the middle digit.
Fuck freeworld, 313
There are a few inaccuracies in this but it gives you a general idea. Dial service & Switching equipment was invented well before the 1940s, It was area codes that were brought on in the 40s. Los Angeles area code was and is 213 not 313. And the word is pulses not pulls on the rotary dial.
Welcome to Cheddar. If you want accurate facts and information, this is not the right place.
Upper michigan is 906 not 616
@dandanthetaximan they probably haven't even seen a payphone
Pulses within a digit; (finger) pulls for a digit. With practice, you can dial a number with the switchhook, since all exchanges support both tone and pulse dialing.
Plus, the equipment it was designed for wasn't "primitive computers" but mechanical switching equipment.
"Now, everybody from the 313
Put your muthafuking hands up and follow me!
Everybody from the 313
Put your muthafuking hands up! Look, look...
Now, while he stands tough
Notice that this man did not have his hands up"
The Free World's got you gassed up
Now who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf
@@sharkboy1351 Fuck the free world
When she said 313 I thought of the same shit
I don’t get it
I still remember my ("late") grandmother's 1st phone number in 1945.I was 6years old .they never moved or changed to a different phone. Every time that "ma bell" changed their number, they were " grumbely " for a while whenever they had to Adapt to the changes that went like this:
Charleston 28892
CH 28892
382 8892
My memory gets foggy about
Here, and I don't remember the area code for Burbank, CA in the 1960's and the 70's. That really took me back! I hope that you have a little fun with this!
RIP Detroit’s 313 for not being listed in the Luda song map, and later in the video for stating that LA has that particular area code.
SWes608 its actually in the song
“So control your whoremones and keep your drawers on
'Til I close the door and I'm jumping your bones
3-1-2, 3-1-3, 2-1-5, 8-0-3”
She even says six poles(?) on the rotary dial, when 3+1+3=7, not six.
DETROIT VS EVERYBODY
Nick Prince bro lmao it’s not that deep
@@420......... fuck off , you live in Shelby you poser
Knoxville, Tennessee’s area code is 865. When spelled out on a number pad it spells VOL. GO VOLS!!! 🍊
Cheddar u just got blacklisted from Detroit for jumbling up LA and Detroit on the 313.. where TF is Trick-Trick this is a NO FLY ZONE
The oldest area codes for Chicago and L.A. are 312 and 213 respectively
I was just going to comment on that. Glad you spotted it too. Even their map shows L.A. as 213.
trick trick saving receipts after charging “hood taxes”
As someone with a 706 area code, that thumbnail really threw me for a loop.
Moonlily23 same here.
Same
Yo me too
Moonlily23 I’m from Columbus, Georgia
From Augusta Georgia I can agree
3:40
"3-digit codes, out of a possible 152"
Why would there only be 152 possible 3-digit codes? Even if you can't use the same digit twice in a row, or can't use 0 or 1 as the first digit or something, that still seems like a small number when there are 1000 3-digit numbers.
8 options for first digit... 2 options for second digit... 9 options for the third. That makes it for 144. So, it's about the initial plan.
@@brayanhabidcol
Two options for second digit?
Initially, you didn't dial a 1 before calling outside of your Area Code. In order to make it so that the system could tell the difference between an Area Code and a phone prefix (first three digits of a seven digit phone number) Area Codes could only have a 0 or a 1 in the middle digit, and prefixes could NOT have a 0 or 1 in the middle digit. They ended that convention in the 1980s, as it was no longer necessary after we started the "Dial 1" convention) to allow for more telephone numbers in each Area Code and to allow more Area Codes in total.
The eight codes of the form N11 (where N = 2-9) were reserved as service codes. Additional area code patterns were later assigned for other services; for example, the area codes N10 were implemented for the Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX).
Its a legacy left over from an earlier time before the time when you had to dial a "one" before the area code. Plus there are some numbers that are reserved for other uses, for example 911 and 411.
I'm curious if with the rise of cell phones as peoples' *only* phone number, and the decline of extra lines for specific purposes (fax machines, pagers, modems, etc,) if the timeline for "running out of numbers" has changed.
Back in the '90s, when I came back to my parents' house from college, there were seven phone numbers in the house - the main voice line, my teenager-years second line (which my parents got rid of a few years later,) a dedicated modem line (my dad worked from home often enough to need to dial in, and I was in to BBSes, then early internet connections,) my dad's pager, my dad's cell phone, my cell phone, and my pager. Now when I visit, there are only four lines - they still have the same main home line, simply because they've had it for 40 years, and lots of their family only know it; my dad's cell phone, my mom's cell phone, and my cell phone. And that was just numbers at the house itself (when all people were present) - my parents each had at least 3 phone numbers at work, *NOT* counting the cell phone and pagers!
At my house, we've gone from six phone lines in 2006 to three now. (2006: Home, second home that was the dial-up internet line but we kept for a while after moving to high-speed as a fax line, home-based business landline, my cell, wife's cell, kid's cell. Now: One cell phone each for me, wife, kid.) Realized that we didn't need a separate line for the business, and my wife ported our old home number to her cell phone.
I would imagine that late '90s to early '00s was the peak of "phone numbers per person" because of all those other uses, with it dropping to the point where it will be one number per person soon. (Slightly more as people do have business lines still.) But even at 3 lines per person, we still have plenty of numbers.
NANPA, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, constantly revises the exhaustion estimates. Each Area Code has a predicted exhaustion date, as well as the system overall. The date we were to run out of phone numbers in all Area Codes has been pushed back several times due to policy changes that allowed more numbers to be reused or conserved, and also due to changing usage trends. We are still using increasingly more phone numbers, but the rate of increase has declined in recent times. As we approach that exhaust date, expect further policy changes to help put it off as long as possible, as changing to a different numbering plan will be incredibly expensive and disruptive.
@@TrevorHammonds at issue would be the fact that back in the day there was one phone number for a household. Now each person in the house has their own phone and phone number.
But there are many households that have gone the other direction. In 2000, my house had exactly one phone number. Now there are 8. Four family members now have their own cell phone, plus a Google voice number.
US population is now about 335 million and no more than 670 million active US phone numbers currently, so on average two numbers per person. There is supposed to be about 8 billion possible 10 digit phone number combinations (can't have 911 anywhere in the number, no 411 or 555 area codes, 0 can't be 4th digit, etc) so in theory we could have billions in population before we have to worry about it? By the time that happens, if ever, maybe we'll have mind control dialing or something, and no more phone numbers at all.
Businesses still use fax lines, and the rise of free number services like Google Voice mean it's easy and cheap to have multiple numbers. The other problem is in the past, one had to get a new number when they moved, now one can keep the same number for life. That means numbers get reshuffled less and less and new numbers must be used.
One thing not mentioned in the video is the area codes originally had only a 0 or 1 as the second digit. Local exchanges used 2-9 as the second digit. This allowed 7 digit dialing within the local area. The computer looked at the second digit to decide whether it was a local or LD call. This went away in the early 90's they ran out of area code combinations that used 0 or 1 as the second digit. That forced all the phone companies to implement 10 digit dialing for everyone.
So where does 5 digit dialing come in? In the mid 80's, we could dial a local number with just the last 5 digits. That changed somewhere around 1990 ish.
@@dugroz I'm not certain, but it sounds like it would be a unique local exchange thing. As far back as I can remember, we used 7 digits (1970's) where I grew up. I suppose it is possible that a local exchange could have a batch of numbers with only one prefix and the 2nd and 4th digits were neither 0 nor 1 to allow the shortcut. This seems like it would cause the exchange to be limited to a pretty small pool of phone numbers however.
This wikipedia article talks about non-7 digit dialing being rare and phased out in the early 80's. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-digit_dialing
I remember when Los Angeles’
213 area code split in 1984, I was
8 years old. It’s crazy to realize that
every subsequent split of the one
SoCal area code all happened in
such a short span of time after that.
LA area code is 313
Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Warren G:
Am I a joke to you?
COAL GOLEM 313 is Detroit
Uhh, no it's not. It's 213, 310 on the west side, 818/747 in the SFV.
She’s a 336? Nice. I’m familiar with that area. I’m nostalgic for my 828 area code, even though I live in the 704-980 overlay, which now covers the Charlotte metro, but used to cover all of NC. Now NC has 828, 336, 919, 984, 910, and 252. 803 covers a large part of the southern suburbs of Charlotte in South Carolina.
Fascinating! In the UK around 1999/2000 we had a 1 put in our area code whilst london and other large cities redid their area code completely. Our area codes used to be 4 digits and are now 5.
That's a ridiculous length.
When you go to college everyone suddenly has a different area code and they become completely irrelevant
That map at 3:43 is interesting because it also shows the population shift that has happened since the 1950's. All southern states (save TX) have 1 area code. Iowa had 3!
Florida with only one area code in 1947? I find that hard to believe. As for Texas, the state as a whole had only four area codes; now, there are five area codes which cover the immediate Dallas/Fort Worth area (Dallas and Tarrant Counties).
I was marvelling at Iowa and California having the same number of area codes.
definitely wasn’t expecting you to say 336! hello from winston-salem!
Until the 80’s or 90’s the second digit of area codes could only be 0 or 1, whereas the second digit of phone numbers could NOT be 0 or 1. That has gone out the window and now we can use any number on the second digit position
We've had the same area code since 1994: 770
SCJ I believe the 770 area code was the very first one to have digits 2-9 on the second position. Atlanta Area, right?
Also in the original plan, states that only had 1 area code used a 0 in the middle and states with multiple area codes had a 1 in the middle. Pennsylvania had 4 area codes (215, 412, 717, and 814) so they all had 1 as the middle digit. New Jersey originally only had 1 area code (201) so it got a 0 as the middle digit.
The 1-or-0 middle digit rule was abandoned by the early 1950s.
RaymondHng The whole State/partial state (or province) rule was abandoned (more like relaxed tbf) in the 1950s but having an area code with 2-9 as the second digit wasn’t until the 1990s... analog equipment depended on that rule.
I grew up in Grover's Mill, NJ, which has a 609 area code, back in the 1960s. Whenever my grandmother used to call us, as soon as you picked up the phone, you knew it was her, because she was calling from her 201 area code (Manasquan) and a long-distance phone call like that in those days had a certain scratchiness quality to the line--even though the "long-distance" was only about 40 miles! 😀❤
My kids are utterly bamboozled you had to pay for calls that were out of area.
Just want to point out New Jersey’s zip codes start with 0, that map is inaccurate.
beat me to it
Welcome to Cheddar. First time?
Blood Bath and Beyond - Pop Goes Metal Covers lol been here for a while, this is just the first time it hit close to home
and when they said the 0 starts from the east, Maine's area code is 207
@Manny that map was accurate BEFORE they further began splitting area codes. In Toronto there are now 3 seperate codes
Bell Company had the area codes similar for far away populations because they used to have long distance charges, and with thousands of minor slips per day, phone company made tons
Los Angeles wasn't the 3rd biggest city in 1947. Philadelphia was.
They also used economic and political factors, not just population, to determine the numbering. Otherwise, if population alone was used, Washington, DC would not have been assigned 202.
Trevor Hammonds does this explain why the suburbs around DC in Maryland were assigned 301? Baltimore itself has 443
@@elocinaqui24 It's not just the suburbs of DC and MD that have 301...Garrett County, the westernmost county in MD, also uses 301, as does Allegany, Washington, and Frederick Counties
@@elocinaqui24 Until 1990, 301 covered all of Maryland. Baltimore and eastern Maryland got 410 in 1991. 443 came about in 1997.
213 originally also covered San Diego, which was smaller then that it is now, but still a significant city.
Here in Montreal we'v had 514 as long as iv been around. But we had to add a second code 438 to accommodate growth. When I changed providers I had to change my number and I got a new 438 number. But recently I changed providers again and this time they had a 514 number available. I took it right away. I'm back in the original area code gang!
What bothers me is that in a era where you can take your phone number with you, and everyone you talk to can potentially have a different area code, people will still frequently leave off the area code when reciting their number. What bothers me even more than that are A) The people that do give their whole number find it necessary to add the "1", as if that's not implied, and B) Some antiquated phone systems still require you dial it. For example, if I have to call home from work (no cell phone allowed) I have to dial 9 to get out, then 1, then the area code, and then the number. Even calling locally, I still have to dial 1 and the area code. Whereas on my cell phone, I don't have to use any of that unless I'm calling outside my local area. And I never ever have to dial 1. Except on antiquated phones like the one at my work.
That's a holdover from when cellular phones were first implemented. You don't have to dial the initial 1 because there is a send button. The system knows you have finished dialing and can figure out how to route the call. On a landline, the system needed the 1 to differentiate between dialing a local seven-digit call or a long distance call. The landline equipment would start routing immediately as you dial, rather than waiting for all the digits to be received. It's the way the system worked and it saved time while you were manually dialing. Now, it remains that way for convention, and to avoid a delay after you've stopped dialling when dialling fewer than 10 digits, as there is no send button.
0:31 New Jersey zip codes start with 0
Yes, NJ was included with NE, my guess is population why NY was skipped.
I worked as a telephone operator in the early 80s and had all the area codes memorized. Not anymore!
@Richard Head good question. I don't know if telephone operators still exist today. I do remember people who would call directory assistance every day, and we even had one woman who would call the operator to place ALL of her phone calls, even local ones.
Jonathan Wheat must have been from Hooterville.
They exist, but not in the same way anymore. Most of the time operators are either for 411 information services or for collect call services (mostly for jails or international collect calls) Yes. People still sometimes make collect calls. Usually from airports or from gas stations.
I used to work in AT&T long distance customer service and yes I used to know all of them too but now, not so much.
I've been to Georgia as an exchange student. I had 704 lol, when I saw 706 in the thumbnail I expected like a neighbor city or something haha
Here in germany every city has a 4-5 digit code (depending on size usually, smaller means bigger city) and the first two numbers are from an area and the last 2 or 3 are for the city. So I know from the first two digits from which state the caller could be or that area. This is only for landlines though. Mobile phones are something different. The second to fourth digits are from the phone company. So you know that 0176 is probably vodafone. (always with a leading 0)
Some major cities have a three digit code, such as Frankfurt/Main with 069.
But yeah, great system in my eyes, as a vague idea of how the country is split up, lets you roughly know if you may know the caller or not!
Oh hey, I'm 336 as well! That's so neat and rare to find out the orator for this video so close. :)
High Point here.
Hey!!! 336 resident here too!!! But I have a 919 area code. Same number since 2002. It's a part of my identity now.
When I was stationed in South Korea, each cell phone company had their own "area code". I once heard that cell phone companies wanted to do the same thing here, but congress wouldn't let them. I've had the same Southwest Missouri phone number for over 10 years, even tho I haven't lived in the 417 since 2011.
Fifteen years ago the exchange (first three numbers after area code) was owned by the cell phone company. They leased specific exchanges for their brand from ATT. This was back in the days when it was illegal to market to cell phones and all cell phones were unlisted numbers. It made it tons easier to exclude cell phones for marketing when specific exchanges where used only by cell phone companies. Now it's a mish mash since phone numbers can be ported to different carriers. Fifteen years ago you couldn't do that. Each number was proprietary to the carrier.
Here in NL, all cell phone numbers start with 06 (for the area code) so everybody calling that knows they are calling a cell phone, in USA you have no idea if it is a landline or not, therefore the billing system is different. Not sure if it it still that way, but I hated having to pay for someone calling me. Here that never happens.
It's cool seeing 803 and 703 were first in those states, cause I've lived in each of those area codes. I feel significant
773 is to the White Sox as 312 is to the Cubs.
On another It’s amazing how recent 773 (1996) and 872 (2009) are
Wrigley Field (Cubs) is also in 773.
Baltimore has 410, 443, and 301. There may be another. I've also noticed that certain neighborhoods have the same 3 numbers after the area code. Lots of places in dundalk have a 288 number, the Paterson park area has 722 and butchers hill 522.
Was generally true for landlines everywhere in the US.
Where I grew up, all telephone numbers started with "88", more precisely, 881, 882, 884, 885 and 886 (883, 887, and 888 were elsewhere in the area code).
Furthermore, most people would give their phone number as TUxedo 1-2345 (for example).
I had no idea you were from North Carolina.
336 represent! 😁
919 gang
704
980
704
I’m a bit of an area code nerd. At 3:25 it’s mentioned that there was an attempt to distance similar area codes when they were first issued, but an exception exists with the original area codes of Louisiana (504) and Oklahoma (405) which were separated by less than 80 miles. Another interesting thing is that all area codes with “0” as the middle digit were originally used for their entire state; states with multiple area codes originally had “1” as the middle digits. It wasn’t until 1995 that the first area codes appeared with middle digits other than “0” or “1.”
The southern most East-West interstate is I-4, not I-10
It's an awful road so we don't talk about it here.
Well they were referring to the major highways that go coast to coast
@@NazbolCaliphDonaldaddeenTrump I second that. "Interstate" 4 is completely contained in a handful of Florida counties.
@@petergray2712 yeah there are a bunch of these interstates that do that. I-96 is entirely in the south peninsula of Michigan, and I-89 only goes between NH and VT (into QC Canada)
@@NazbolCaliphDonaldaddeenTrump It goes from coast to coast! ...of Florida. It's roughly Sanford to Tampa. But yeah, like my beloved I-87 and eastern I-88, it's only an intrastate.
It's nice to see antiquated telephony being taught about. It's a collector's niche and an interesting subculture.
I had been used to 213 my whole life and then in high school, it seemed like 5-6 new area codes were added just like that!
2:36 I live in the Texas area where it says the area code is 214 where there is some 214s here but we mainly have 817 and 682
You're likely in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Dallas became a much bigger deal soon after the original designations, so Forth Worth got 817 early on while Dallas hung onto 214. Remember also that this is before all-digital (contactless) switching, which is what allowed area codes with something other than zero or one in the middle digit. That change wasn't until the late 1980s, when 781 (metro Boston) and 281 (outer Houston) broke the mould after San Antonio got one of the last semi-original codes: 210.
The map also misses some important area codes from the original. 914 and 716 got skipped in New York state, for example. DC's 202 isn't even a line. Oh, and Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_NANP_area_codes for the full list
No mention that the original NANPA standard for area codes required that the middle digit was either a 1 or a 0
And if the middle digit was 1, it meant that state had more than 1 area code. If the middle digit was 0, the area code covered that whole state.
They missed the part where the old switching equipment knew it was an area code over an exchange was that all initial area codes in the NANP had the middle digit a "1" or a "0". Modern switching equipment didn't have that limitation so when they ran out of the original area codes, they could start using number other than 0 and 1 for the middle digit.
This chick from Greensboro, roll NC 🙌🏼
Winston-Salem also uses 336, probably High Point too. Lots of little towns and sparsely populated counties around there use it too.
Mika Chance what a beautiful voice u have babygirl 👏😻
336 generally serves the triad region of nc not to be confused with the research triangle.
Yeah I live in the mountains with 336.
Lexington also uses 336
And we're already requiring more overlays in populated areas. In June, 689 is being added to the Orlando region in addition to 407 and parts of 321.
i always liked the sienfeld episode about area codes
646 is just like 212...you multiply by 3...and add 10
You also missed that all the original area codes had a 0 or 1 as the middle digit (and local exchanges, did not). Once those were exausted, we had to switch to 1+AC dialing as the way to differentiate Local Exchange vs AC. My first phone number: BOonton-8-0187-W, which changed to DEerfield 4-3618 when Dial phones came to town
The reason for that is that no local numbers then had a 1 or 0 in the first two digits, since they had to be the first two letters of a word (a popular movie in the 1950s was “BUtterfield 8,” the beginning of a character’s telephone number, which coincidentally are the numbers for ATT). So dialing only a 0 reached the operator to make a long distance call. But many local exchanges were still mechanical, and could not store an entire number to parse it into area code, exchange, etc. They had to commit to a switching path based on the digits already received.
So if the first digit dialed was 0, the system would wait for another digit. If nothing came for several seconds you got the operator for assistance with a local or long distance call. If another 0, you still got the operator (after 1984, when you could choose a separate long distance company, 00 got the LOCAL company operator). If the first 0 was followed by a 1, that was an error. If it was followed by a digit 2-9, it was the beginning of an area code OR a 7-digit number in the same area code. If the third digit was also a digit 2-9, it WAS in the same area code, and after 5 more digits it would ring the operator and display the 7 digits. If the third digit was a 0, it was an area code, and after 8 more digits it would ring the operator and display the area code and number. Since a long distance call had a toll charge, the operator handled person to person (I don’t want to pay if I can’t speak to Joe, but I’m willing to pay more if I can), collect (will Joe pay for me to call him?), and credit card calls (yep, they had those for travelers).
But if the first digit dialed was 1, the same logic determined whether you were directly dialing a local or long distance number in the same area code (then the first 3 digits of the number would route the call to the correct local exchange), or a call to a different area code (routing the call to that area code). Then you got connected without an operator (at station to station rates; you were charged for the call if anyone answered).
And that’s why the original area codes had a 1 or 0 in the middle and any other digit on either side of it. Except for special area codes like 800 or 900, and special numbers like 411 (separating operators who looked up numbers from operators who helped make calls) and 911. This is why the US network didn’t follow the U.K. in using 999 for emergencies; there were probably actual numbers here beginning with those digits (XYlophone 9-1234?), and 911 fit in with the logic for detecting area codes vs local numbers.
Oh, and the map is wrong about Florida too. The first area code map showed all of Florida as 305 EXCEPT the area down the Gulf Coast from somewhere north of Tampa down the middle of the peninsula to Florida Bay (I don’t remember if the western part of the Keys were included; probably not, for wiring reasons), which was 813 (most of Hillsborough County is still 813). Why? Because the local provider there was GTE (now Verizon), so they got their own area code.
Shoutout to those in the 336 area!
As for Manhattan's street grid, the lower cross streets use names instead of numbers, such as Wall St, Canal St, Vestry St, Spring St.
Well done folks!
You managed to take a benign subject matter, and make it interesting by injecting wit & humor. Couldn’t ask for much more.
4:15 Staten Island is also like that, guess it has been forgotten again. The forgotten borough
But 'ey, youz guys have always wanted to leave Nu Yawk City anyways, didn't ya?
San Francisco already has a new area code. I was one of the first adopters of the 628 area code after living overseas in 2014. Proud of it as well
You seem to Have a boring life if you are proud of Area code lol
Keke Rosberg hence why I left San Francisco....
How about this system:
State prefix - county prefix - number
e.g Someone in Manhattan 01 - 01 - 12345678
Someone in Queens 01 - 02 - 12345678
Someone in LA 02 - 01 - 12345678
Emergency services 9x - xx
Issues:
Seven US states have 100 or more counties, so two digits there isn't quite enough. Eight digits for the actual number would permit 100,000,000 numbers per county, which is probably more than needed.
But most significantly with the obsolescence of landlines, there's little point to basing numbers on geography at all.
Or maybe you could forget all that complication, and just put the number 9 into existing Area Codes and go from there with four-digit Area Codes.
USA has 50 states, 1 district, 6 outlying areas. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories. This makes it 70 codes from 01-70, and 19 free codes from 71-89. So if there are less than 19 regions with more than 100 counties, then those can have two prefixes, splitting the region east-west or north-south. The remaining prefixes are for future use.
The reason NYC (now Manhattan) was assigned 212 is sort-of mentioned in the video, but a better explanation is this: The original computers that routed called were (and still are) called Switches. Each switch can only make so many connections simultaneously. The switch has to listen to the area code before starting to make the connection. The faster the user could input the number, the more less time it too to listen, and the less time it took to make the connection. This meant that each switch could handle more calls if the listening time was short, so they made the areas with the most long distance calls the shortest for a rotary dial phone to make.
"To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad, now."
"They made sure to put a lot of geographic distance between numerically similar numbers" - so that when you misdialed and got the wrong number halfway across the country, they could charge you long-distance rates.
That Bell infomercial sounds sexist as hell.
Right?
But, back when, I'm sure a tiny part of that logic was also that you'd rather hear a more pleasant female voice than have a man make your connection. And women were cheaper to hire, because...... well... yeah.
Though, it's not _too_ hard a reach to try to think of reasons outside outright sexism why operators were generally female. The existing male labor pool having existing jobs when this boom was happening definitely had a part of it, though.
Still, things sure have changed.
@@skuzzyj
The sexism that cyrilio is mentioning is referring to women as girls.
@@blindleader42
I'm aware of that. But I'm also pointing out that women in general were the preferred choice for operators
@@blindleader42 Your comment led me down an interesting google search. Thank you
@@Giatros89
Interesting. I never thought to research the history of sexist language, since I was there and witnessed all of it.
I got this, knowing exactly what I would get by googling doonesbury baby woman:
i.pinimg.com/originals/f4/7c/af/f47caf29576cc58a85deb1e0c2ea183c.gif from 1973.
edit: I should probably qualify "all of it". From the sixties onward, the rise of modern (baby boomer) feminism.
In Singapore, they ran out of numbers in the early 2000s. In 2002, actually, they added 6 to landline phones so 733-4533 became 6733-4533. Mobile Numbers were given a 9. So 333-1111 became 9333-1111. They could also add 2-5, 7 and 8 and have a lot more numbers.
Mistake at 3:10... Area code 313 is Detroit, not Los Angeles.
So in Virginia it used to be all 703, up until some point in the last half decade, you have 703 and 571 in Northern VA, Central VA has 434 and 540, Southern VA has 804 and 757.. what's more incredible is of your in the Northern VA area and you have say 703-494 you can figure out exactly about where you are calling or 703-491 for that matter and it's rather interesting
The lowest Interstate number in the US is 8, not 10. 8 is West of Phoenix to San Diego.
The principal (longest) highways end in 5 (odd, north-south) or 0 (even, east-west). Intermediate odd or even numbers are for shorter routes like the 8 in your example. But 4 is the lowest; it connects 75 in Tampa to 95 in Daytona, going through Orlando (AKA Mouse Country).
Even if you’ve never been to Florida, you must have heard election night reporters refer to the swing part of the swing state of Florida as the “I-4 Corridor.”
Sorry but Florida ha I-4 from Tampa to Daytona Beach
@@johnschnellbach986 Thee is now an Interstate 2 in south Texas.Recent addition.
@@rayfridley6649 well dang!!! Learned something new today
The two states I've spent most of my 50 years in still have single area codes. 207 and 603 baby!
Live free or die! Always be my home
Very interesting. I wonder how much interest there would be in a video on the old Party Lines (GODDAMNIT JUDY HANG UP! The call is for us) or why early numbers had a letter at the end. And yes, I can remember both of those. ;-)
The letter suffix on the party line phone number identified the side of the line which rang that phone on the line. On manual switching, the operator would know which side of the party circuit the phone's ringer was connected. Many times the letter was followed by another number, which indicated the ringing code(i.e. 2 long, one short) of the phone being called.
@@rayfridley6649 I remember that the numbers in our area had either a "T" for tip or an "R" for ring in our area but had forgotten that the number of rings told which phone the call was for. Just about every party line had one busybody that picked up every call to listen in. On our line Judy listened to every ones calls until some of the neighborhood men threatened to beat the hell out of her husband if he didn't "persuade" her to stop picking up everyone's calls and listening in. lol
TheSweetOldMan In this case “ring” refers to the outer conductor on the phone plug (the standard headphone plug is a miniature version of the old 1/4” plug), and “tip” refers to the onion shaped tip of the plug which latches into the Jack. Most plugs today have two “ring” conductors, but back then they only had one.
The terminology is still used in the phone business, where electricians say “hot” and “neutral” or “ground.”
I had a suggestion back before they changed the rule on Area Codes where the middle digit of had to be 1 or 0 and Prefixes couldn't have a 1 or 0, that instead of doing away with that, they should have changed from 7 digit number "local numbers" to 9 digits. This made more sense because most people think of numbers in groups of three digits each, this is why Area Codes and Prefixes are 3 digits each. In other words, 800-555-1212 is thought as 800 (first group) 555 (second group) 121 (third group) and 2xx (4th group) with the xx being failed digits. If they had gone to a 9 digit local number that would have increased the pool of available numbers in an area code 100 fold. They never would have had to do away with the original rule that area codes middle digit had to be a 1 or 0 and prefixes couldn't have a 1 or 0 as the middle digit. Now that this video is saying they are contemplating adding another digit to the area code, I am bringing up my suggestion again.
617 doesn't have as much caché now that mobile phones are, well, mobile + once your contact is plugged into your mobile, the user never really sees any of the 10-digits again
What you call Area Codes were originally internal TelCo routing codes. You would get the operator and tell her you wanted long distance. She would connect you to another operator who would say "Long Distance for what city?" She would contact the "Inward Operator for that city (NY,NY" by dialing 212-121. (Inward was always area code + 121). The Inward Operator would complete your connection.
at 0:35 NJ's zip codes starts with 0XXXX
And Delaware’s start with 1!
Is Cheddar saying that Nu Joisey is a big fat zero?
In that case, so is Boston, heh heh . . .
No one in recent comments have talked about The Simpons particular area code (939) they got in that years ago episode.
We, in Puerto Rico, got that particular area code just a couple of years after the episode debuted Stateside. It's layered only for us with wireless lines (Including my own smartphone) and complements our 787, which was given to the Island after the old 809 that was for the whole Caribbean was given to just the Dominican Republic (they got 1-2 more now).
Some people still call to the Island thinking they're calling someone in Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale), FL. Their main code is 786, very close to our 787 landline and old wireless code...
This was a pretty sloppy episode. No mention of the fact that it's not just the US and Canada in the system. No mention of the restricted middle digits earlier in the system. No mention of the special non-geographic "area" codes. Wildly and obviously incorrect statistic given for the resulting number of possible three digit area codes. At the end, no elaboration of how inserting a 9 in (all?) the area codes help anything.
Area Code expansion can possibly entail preserving all existing phone numbers and just inserting a 9 as the second digit in all Area Codes. This would make all Area Codes four digits and allow for millions of additional phone numbers. However, there are several things that can and will be done before this is even considered. Changing the numbering plan for all of North America will be incredibly costly and disruptive. We will not be doing so any time soon, if ever.
Growing up in New Mexico, I remember when the geographic majority of the state was switched to 575 instead of 505 which is now the area code for the central part of the state including Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Also, I never knew that 915 used to cover so much of Texas, including the panhandle. I've always known it as mainly El Paso County's area code, and it has since became widely associated as part of EPTX's identity.
They wouldn't be able to hire enough girls to handle the demand of telephones... gotta love the casual sexism of that age. RIP
cry some more
@@B3Band only if your music is playing in the background to keep me in the mood.
In Toronto, we have 416, 647, and 437., but in the GTA, we have 905, 289, and 365.
but 416,647,and 437 is also used in the GTAA
0:17 except you forgot a spot 313 is Detroit area code but you have nothing highlighted in the state of Michigan.
Here in Northern Alabama, I've had BOTH an area code split AND an overlay. I moved to Huntsville in 1997 and had area code 205. In 1998 Northern AL was moved to area code 256, and in 2010 we got the overlay code of 938. Interestingly, or not, I have yet to see any listings or advertisements using the 938 area code.
When cell phones started growing in number, I wonder why they didn't just create new area codes for them. That way you'd know if you were calling a cell phone, and cell phones geography doesn't matter as much.
karlinchina idk i find it most common where i'm from for landlines to have a 301 area code and newer cell phones tend to use the overlaid 240 area code. it's not 100% accurate but it's solid way to guess if the number you're dialing is a mobile phone or not.
They tried that at first. But people sued because it was felt to be discriminatory at the the time. People were scared to dial unfamiliar area codes for fear of huge long distance bills. It wasn't so much a problem with geographical splits - when 213 got split to 213 and 818, everyone near the area code border knew lots of people with both numbers, so they knew where that number sorta was. But with overlays, especially when they're still relatively new, a lot of people were afraid and upset by them. Cell phone companies didn't want their customers to suffer that stigma, they were worried it would discourage people from getting cell phones (or beepers, which were big back then).
@dandanthetaximan beeper (also known as a pager). essentially they were little quasi-text messaging devices, you could send them a 10 digit number (generally, the number you wanted the recipient to call you back on), and the recipient's device would beep and then display the number sent to it. They had some popularity at one point, but were mainly used by doctors and drug dealers.
Good point! It would also have taken the heat off the landline number pool.
Just to add some a little more info to the story, when the area codes first started the second digit was either a 1 or 0. The one was assigned to the largest cities in the US at the time and to shorten the dialing time (as mentioned in the video). The zero was assigned for more rural areas or less populated areas.
In the original 1947 numbering plan, states that had only 1 area code assigned to them had a zero in the middle. States with more than one area code had a "1".
313 is Detroit's area code
As someone who lives in New Hampshire, where the entire state has a single area code, and always has had the same area code, I am so glad that I don't have to deal with this.
That’s the American education system for ya. Putting numbers next to each other in an order that makes no sense
Same as the layout of your keyboard. It once made perfect sense. Too late to change it now. The Earth would grind to a halt if you tried to. What would be really funny would be if you were really Kim watching TH-cam videos while trying to decide who to execute next. lol
Notice that no area codes begin with 1. The reason is that many businesses use an old PBX internal telephone system that requires dialing (or pressing) 9 for an outside line. If it's necessary to then press 1 (the USA international long distance country code), pressing 1 again to begin the area code activates emergency services.
Bay area area codes:
Was just 415.
Then they added 510 and 925..
510+415=925 🤯🤯🤯
Bay Area represent!!! Also 650 in their too :D
415 was one of the original three area codes in California, established in 1947. It originally covered central California, south of area code 916 and north of area code 213. It stretched from Sacramento in the north to Bakersfield in the south.
In 1950, 415 was expanded along the North Coast to the Oregon border and shortened in the south, while 916 was rotated to cover the northeastern corner of the state. As part of this realignment, Sacramento was shifted from 415 to 916, while Bakersfield moved to 213.
Area 415 has been split three times due to the Bay Area's rapid expansion:
On March 1, 1959, area code 408 was created for San Jose and the South Bay. (408 has since been split to 831 and overlaid with 669.)
On September 2, 1991, area code 510 was created for the East Bay, including Oakland. (510 has since been split to 925 and will be overlaid by 341 in 2019.)
On August 2, 1997, area code 650 was created; the partition approximately followed the boundary between San Francisco, which (along with Marin County) kept 415, and San Mateo County to the south, which received the new code. Deviations from the county line were a very small area east of the San Francisco Golf Club, which was changed to 650, and portions of Brisbane and Daly City, which retained area code 415.
On February 21, 2015, area code 628 was assigned as an overlay for new numbers in the 415 territory, making ten-digit dialing mandatory in the area. 415 had been one of the few urban area codes that had not been overlaid, making San Francisco one of the largest cities where seven-digit dialing still functioned.
303 originally
now 303,720,719,970
720+719+970=2409
4 area codes
2409/4=602
3+0+3=6
720 and 719 have a difference of 0 in the hundreds place=0
2 area codes for city and 2 for rural=2
3 digits
illuminati confirmed
@@MCatwar Originally born in 212... Brooklyn went to 718 in 1985, and now you got 347, 929, and 646 in the mix. That doesn't include Long Island(516 and later 631 as well), nor does it include Westchester/Rockland(914/845).
Chicago has a interesting system as well, South Side area Codes are 773, 312 for Northside, 708 & 630 for west/West suburbs
Hey im 336 too! Winston for life