Nancy And The Zoo

STORYTIME ... The Case Of The Phone Gone Wild

We were all talking about when phones changed from party lines to area codes and even earlier. Nancy relayed to us that she remembers when the aera codes first came into existence and for several weeks she and her family kept getting calls for the New York Central Park Zoo... They hade the same numbers ,(212) 439-6500, and the area codes were similar.... 213 for Nancy and 212 for the Zoo.

Some at the taqble did NOT remember when our telephone numbers were NOT just numbers.... See the table below!

For weeks they would answer the phone all hours of the day and night.

Did You Know? - In early telephone systems, connections were made in the central office by telephone operators using patch cords to connect one party to another. If a person wanted to make a phone call, in some phone systems he or she would pick up a phone and wind a crank on the side. In other systems the person would wind the crank first, then pick up the phone. The crank was a small generator that would light a lamp at the central office. An operator would see the light and insert their patch cord into a socket and assist the customer with the call connection. The operator would use patch cords to connect the caller to the person being called. If the party being called was in another exchange, the operator would use a patch cord to connect to another exchange where an operator elsewhere would finish the connection. As technology advanced, electro-mechanical switches were introduced and calls were made using rotary dials.

Did You Know? - Area codes were assigned based on the length of time a rotary dial phone took to dial the area code. Densely populated areas like New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit had huge incoming call volume and were assigned numbers (212, 312, 213, 313) that could be quickly dialed from a rotary dial phone. On a rotary dial phone low digits (1, 2, 3, 4) could dial quickly as the time the rotary dial took to return to the home position was minimal. High digit numbers (7, 8, 9, 0) on rotary dial phones took much longer to return to the home position and were usually used in less densely populated areas like rural Texas (915). This numbering strategy became unnecessary when touch-tone phones arrived, as the tone allowed instant entry of digits.