I have heard that here in the U.K. we use 999 as our emergency services number due to the ease of dialing it in a panic on old style phones but what is the thinking behind using 911 as the emergency services number?
Also, in my attempt to find the answer to this question I discovered that 999 was put into action as the emergency services number in 1937 whereas 911 wasn’t put into action until 1968. Why did it take so long for a unified emergency services number to be put into use in the U.S.A.?
Another question, what did people do before the one number for all services system? Did they have to dial their local police department (or whatever) directly to request assistance?
Yeah. There was a lack of standardization because local telephone service was controlled by dozens of small local telephone companies throughout the country, a result of the forced divestiture of AT&T’s monopoly, and the few remaining independant operations. There are still several extant local providers, though there have been lots of mergers in the past couple decades.
When the companies got together to standardize numbering plans back in the 1940s, they settled on three digit area codes where the first digit could be 1-9, the second digit could be 1 or 0, and the third digit could be 2-9[sup]1[/sup]. This left X-1-1 and X-0-1 numbers as impossible area codes. The X-0-1 numbers were originally used to force a connection to specific long-distance compaies. That was eventally changed to the 10-XXX standard, and then later the 101-XXXX standard.
The local telcos used the X-1-1 numbers for whatever they wanted. Eventually they standardized on certain services like 411 for directory assistance, etc. A combination of better technology and local and statewide laws caused them to impliment 911 starting with big cities and moving out into the burbs. Where I grew up, which was by no means a small town, didn’t have 911 until the 1980s.
[sup]1[/sup]In the 1990s they realized they were running out of area codes and opened up the middle digit.[/sup]
It used to be that you called the operator by dialing “0”. The operator would then notify local police, ambulance, or fire services. Or you could dial these directly; public-service agencies would often distribute stickers to put on the phone that had the numbers on them.
Some cities are experimenting with the idea of a 3-1-1 system for non-essential city services; if you need a cop right now, you call 9-1-1, but if you need, say, the water department, you call 3-1-1. This is supposed to keep people from calling 911 for routine or minor things.
The short answer is that 911 (and other so-called “vertical” codes like 411 and 311) are an artifact of the North American Numbering Plan, which was put into place in the 1950s.
Under the NANP, seven digit numbers (NXX-XXXX) indicated calls withing the same Numbering Plan Area and ten digit numbers (NPA-NXX-XXXX) indicated long disstance (Access trunk) calls. This is all very general, you understand; here in New York it’s possible to make a regional long didtance call (within the same NPA) by dialing seven digits.
In order for the switch to know if the the first three digits you dialed were an area code (NPA), and thus the first of ten, or a local Central Office Code (NXX) and thus the first of seven, NPAs always had a one or Zero as the second digit, and NXXs never did. A whole bunch of codes were unusable as well (such as those starting with 0 or 1) and the vertical codes in each NPA were reserved for future use. (A lot of this stuff is due to the way switches worked at the time) I’m not sure if emergency service was contemplated from the beginning. The NXX code 555 was also reserved for information.
Everything has changed, because we started to run out of numbers. Now a 1 dialed in first position indicated a ten-digit call (no longer necessarily long-distance) and eliminated the need for the one-or-zero-in-second-position-distinction, and therefor freed up a lot of potential NPA and NXX codes, greatly expanding the capacity of the NANP.
In short, we couldn’t use 999, because the moment you dialed the second digit your local switch would think you were placing a regular call.
As to why it took so long - there are and were hundreds of telephone companies across the country, and the NANP also serves Canada, Mexico, the Carribean and a few places like American Samoa and Guam. In order for it to work everybody has to operate in a similar fashion. It just took a while to get everybody on the same page.
Yes, before 911 you called emergency numbers directly. When I was a kid we had a label on the wall next to the kitchen phone with police, fire department, and ambulance service numbers written on it.
The origin of the British 999 isn’t to do with ease of dialling - it’s ease of implementation. Dialling zero on payphones without putting money in was already in place, and the easiest modification to make a free emergency number was to make work in the same way.
On the mechanical dial there was a switch which opened if you dialled 9 or 0 (that is almost the full extent of the dial travel). This switch bypassed the payphone mechanism and so allowed free calls.
In the UK now you can now dial 112 (the European standard) on your phone as an alternative to 999.
x01 specifically excluded? are you sure it’s not another number? As far back as I can remember, 30-odd years or so, (Until new area codes started being added en masse in the late 90s), West Tennesse was 901, Arkansas was 501, and Mississippi was 601.
According to my Krakow guidebook this seems to be the same in Poland. 999 ambulance , 998 fire brigade and 997 police.Hopefully , now that Poland are in the EU they will switch to 112.
One more bit of trivia: in Australia the emergency number is 000. So I’ve lived in three countries (Australia, the UK and the US) with three different emergency numbers. Fortunately, I’ve got a good memory for numbers. And even more furtunately, I’ve never had to use them.
X11 was exclude, X01 was fine (again, though, initially only for area codes).
Not really. At&T, or more properly the Bell System, was far and away the largest but it never came close to covering the entire country. For instance, Southern New England Telephone in Connecticut and Cincinatti Bell in Ohio sound like Bell Operating Companies, but never were.
There are around 40 independent local telephone companies in New York alone. The second largest local carrier in the state is Rochester Telephone with a few million access lines, and it’s not a BOC.
I grew up in Connecticut, so I’m well aware of the existence of independent phone companies. And I did say the vast majority of the country, not all of it. I doubt that all of those areas that were served by SNET, Cincinnati Bell, GTE and the other independents amounted to more than ten percent of the population.
But I was commenting on friedo’s statement that the “dozens of small local telephone companies” were a result of the divestiture. That doesn’t sound right.
I just went to check, and Rochester Tel has about half a million subscribers, not a couple of million like I said.
There aren’t “around 40” independents, there are exactly 40, altough a lot of them (probably 15-20) have been bought by holding companies and larger telcom outfits. Rochester, for instance, has been a Frontier subsidiary for years now. The other small ILECs are still family business.