Heidi Bond explains some area codes by remembering rotary phones: areas with larger populations (New York, LA, Chicago) got codes with lower digits (212, 213, 312) because these take less time to dial on a rotary phone. Maybe it's because I've only used a rotary phone a very few times in my life, but the elegance of this system really blew me away.
A couple observations. First of all, my immediate relaction was to think about how it would suck to live outside one of these population centers -- because after all, having to dial a 7 instead of a 2 is practically a death sentence. But actually, it's not the people who have these numbers who benefit at all, it's the people who dial them who have it easy -- so the burden is much better distributed than it might seem. The system was both efficient and reasonably equitable.
Also, considering the amount of attention paid to the convenience of these numbers, I wonder why they picked 911 as the number to call in an emergency. At first I thought maybe 911 had come along after rotary phones were already gone, but according to this page on the history of 911, that isn't the case.
Minor point - I believe the large cities got low numbered area codes not because they took less time to dial, but because fewer clicks took less time to connect and process. The goal was to reduce the burden on the switches, not on the user of the phone.
I'm sure they passed it off on nuclear war and defense preparedness the way we pass everything off now as preventing terrorism.
Probably the burden on the switches actually mattered to the life of the switches and the resources levels! But whatever the reason, that setup was more efficient.
But consider that NYC got 212 and DC got 202--the longest possible "low" number....My mother always explained this as either a bizarre coincidence or a cruel trick played by the (NYC-based) phone company.
Actually Paul, you should check out Heidi's comment thread for more on this -- it seems all of those middle digits were either 1 or 0 at the beginning, which kind of blows a hole in the explanation I gave above!
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