Why is it.....?

[Monkeyleg]

There are things--often little things--in life that make me ask, "why is it?"

Just an example that's been irritating me:

A couple of months ago the phone company changed the procedure for dialing local calls (maybe it was nationwide, don't know). Rather than just dial the seven-digit phone number, for local calls I'm now required to dial the area code as well.

Out of habit, when I'm dialing a number with an area code, I dial a "1" first. It's been that way since long distance was invented before I was born.

Anywho, if I dial a "1" first when making a local call, I get the recording that says, "it's not necessary to dial a '1' when calling this number", and tells me to dial again.

If it's not necessary to dial a "1", why not just put the call through? It's not necessary to put five quarters in a $1 car vacuum machine, but if I do the machine still works.

Why is it this way, and do you have little irritations like this?

[TommyGunn]

The phone company is running out of numbers ... it will eventually be necessary to invent more numbers.
I had to go through my cell phone and my cordless phones and edit the numbers so when I used the memory function they would work right.  OK ... but I am not so good at remembering the details of how technogizmos work as I was 25-30 years ago.  Techno gizmos were simpler back then, too.
I recently had to buy a new cordless phone for my bedroom as the old one was beginning to chew through batteries too fast .... batteries which are apparantly not being made anymore. (a ridiculous situation) and I wound up with the kind that has one of those "satellite" phones for my bathroom -- you know it has a charger base but the real telephone stuff is in the master base.  Thinking I'd have to reprogram all the numbers twice ... I was happily surprised to find the base phone transmited all the new info to the satellite phone, so I only had to do it once!   Sometimes techno-gizmoism (is that even a real word? ) is a good thing.
And adding the "1" matters .... I guess.  you still need it for long distance. 
I'm not sure what James T. Kirk did for long distance -- I'm just happy I am not paying interstellar rates!!!!

[AJ Dual]

I think phone company dialing rules are because of the same reason that asteroids are in space, but hemorrhoids are in your ass.

(Miss you Mr. Carlin)

[RoadKingLarry]

Only so many combinations you can get out of 7 digits and if you figure the prefix stays the same for most exchanges that drops it even further.
Add in cell phones and other devices that need a phone number and you can run out of numbers pretty quick.
Basic telephone switch technology and hardware is 20+ years old and built to be backwards compatible, it gets updated and new stuff is coming in adding VOIP but everything still comes down to a 10 digit telephone number that feeds back through a digital switch sitting in an office somewhere.

[AmbulanceDriver]

Add in the fact that phone #'s are assigned to regions by blocks of about 10k #'s at a time, and now you've got a lot of small towns w/ less than 10k residends (in some cases *lots* less) getting a block fo 10k phone #'s.  Or for example, lets say a town has a population of 11k...  they end up getting 2 blocks, for a total of 20k #'s....

[TechMan]

Called Area Code overlay.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overlay_plan

Kind of fun to browse the NANPA. http://www.nanpa.com/

[brimic]

Out of habit, when I'm dialing a number with an area code, I dial a "1" first. It's been that way since long distance was invented before I was born.

slightly off topic...
when I was groing up in my hometown (pop=1200), we only had to dial the last 4 digits for local calls, and the 7 digits to get through to neighboring towns. That all changed around 1985 or so IIRC.

[Tallpine]

Add in the fact that phone #'s are assigned to regions by blocks of about 10k #'s at a time, and now you've got a lot of small towns w/ less than 10k residends (in some cases *lots* less) getting a block fo 10k phone #'s.  Or for example, lets say a town has a population of 11k...  they end up getting 2 blocks, for a total of 20k #'s....

Our exchange has maybe 200 numbers, if that.

There is no "town" whatsoever - it's all rural.

[230RN]

"Hello, Mabel? Get me Sheriff Andy Taylor, please."

"Dial direct?  What's that?"

"Oh, nine cranks, then one crank, then one more crank?  So that's 9, and then 1, then another 1, right?"

"Ok, I'll try that.  Thanks."





Count your blessings, folks... 

Terry, 230RN

[vaskidmark]

No need to go thru all that.  Everybody picked up just to hear a human voice coming out of the wall -

except when Gomer's kid brother had left the hook up and someone had to drive over there and put the thing you hold up to hear out of back on the yoke.  Simplex magneto switchboards do not like an open line signal.

stay safe.

[doczinn]

As late as 1997 or so, aboard Camp Pendleton one could dial 5 digits to connect anywhere on base.

[230RN]

Even today you can pulse-dial off a tone-dial instrument by hitting the hook the right number of times for each digit.

Takes a bit of finesse, and it's a royal PITA (especially now with the ten-digit numbers), but it can be done. 

Might be interesting to know if you have to dial 911 sometime with a dead keypad or some other bizarre circumstance.

I zotted myself with a telephone magneto once.  Not fun.  Not deadly, but not fun.

http://physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Electricity/Magneto,_telephone/kenyon121a.JPG

8,3,7,7,9,.. 2,3,0,7,6

[RoadKingLarry]

Even today you can pulse-dial off a tone-dial instrument by hitting the hook the right number of times for each digit.

It was way back in the early '80s when I learned that.  handful of us had been assigned to the over night shift at the supply warehouse getting everything ready to go back on the boat after overhaul. The would put dial locks on the phones at night to keep us from dialing out. Kind of crappy because we couldn't even dial out in an emergency like a fire or medical emergency. One of the team was an ICman, taught us all the little trick.

The town my phone works out of didn't get a digital switch till December '95. Until then all you could dial 5 digits to get anything in the exchange.
Kind of a bad deal that weekend when they cut over the switch. Record setting cold weather, -14F. My step-father in law had a heart attack and my mother in law couldn't get a a call out, not even 911. Lost my step father in law that morning.

[230RN]

Back in the 70s a telephone guy gave me the ringback sequence (there was a pause involved) "so I can test how loud I set the ringer," and my Evil Twin used to have a minor amount of fun at parties and such by picking up an extension and dialing it. About ten seconds later the phone would ring back, and the host or hostess would pick up, but nobody would be on the line.  Three or four of those, and my aforementioned Evil Twin would get the giggles and give myself himself away.

They changed the sequence a couple of years later, and the next time I asked a telephone guy about the new one, he wouldn't give it to me.

Drat.

Just as well, since after that, my Evil Twin grew more mature and I he went on to practice somewhat more sophisticated types of humor.

Terry, 230RN

[TommyGunn]

Even today you can pulse-dial off a tone-dial instrument by hitting the hook the right number of times for each digit.

Takes a bit of finesse, and it's a royal PITA (especially now with the ten-digit numbers), but it can be done. 

Might be interesting to know if you have to dial 911 sometime with a dead keypad or some other bizarre circumstance.

I zotted myself with a telephone magneto once.  Not fun.  Not deadly, but not fun.

http://physics.kenyon.edu/EarlyApparatus/Electricity/Magneto,_telephone/kenyon121a.JPG

8,3,7,7,9,.. 2,3,0,7,6

Casio used to make a digital watch in the 1980s that could ring up numbers over a phone system by playing back the tone assigned to a number.  You simply stored the ## in memory, and held the watch up to the phone mouthpiece.
If you could get a dialtone it would work.  Where I worked you couldn't dial out on the phones out in our warehouse, but the Casio watch would do it.

[Perd Hapley]

You buncha phreaks.

[go_bang]

I remember when you could just dial 5 digits for a local call.  I also remember when phones were leased from the phone company and not purchased.  I actually still have, and use, one the old ITT wall-mount rotary phones that my parents used to lease.  The thing has taken a couple hard indirect lightening hits over the years and still works.  All I had to do to get it back in working order was replace the receiver (aka microphone) in the handset.

[Harold Tuttle]

don't make me break out my cap'n crunch blue box whistle

[230RN]

go_bang

All I had to do to get it back in working order was replace the receiver (aka microphone) in the handset.

Yeah, those old carbon mikes with the slip rings.  I remember every once in a while the carbon granules would "pack," or do something to decrease their sensitivity and you had to rap them a couple of times in different directions to restore their response. Took one apart once and dagnabit if the shiny little granules didn't look just like FFFG black powder.

Terry, 230RN

[go_bang]

Yup, that's what happened to the old receiver.  Smacking it against the door jam wasn't fixing it anymore so I had to replace it.  Fortunately there is so much new-old-stock parts around for those phones that you can replace almost any part inside them for dirt cheap.