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999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

independent.co.uk

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Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#41

Post by henrikschroder »

gerdesj wrote: post #21
noncoml wrote: post #3

999 was crappy design for "emergency" as, in the analog era, it would take almost 9x the time to dial it as that of a number like 111 or 112.

I'm sure I wont be the first or the last to point out that you are clearly too young to remember pulse dialing with a rotary input device. The whole point of 999 was that a nine was the only number you could guarantee to accurately dial blind on a rotary input device with only your sense of touch and a little knowledge about the device itself available to you. I'm also not too sure why any other number would be prefe…

I remember the emergency number being 90000 back when rotary dials were common. It's harder to misdial that 999, because you want as separated numbers as possible, and it's faster to dial because only the first 9 takes time, and then you zip through a bunch of zeroes at the end.

I suspect 911 was chosen similarly.

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#42

Post by noncoml »

mannykannot wrote: post #34
noncoml wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So there were valid technical reasons Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive.

> Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive. 'Valid', in this context, means that they do in fact at least diminish the arguments against the chosen solution. If you want to argue that the specific reasons given by others here do not trump your preferred solution, you should make that specific argument, instead of falling back on generalities, especially when they are not so general.

Maybe I should have quoted the "So there were valid technical reasons".

That sentence was what I was replying to.

It is not a generality. I am just stating that having valid technical reasons doesn't mean it cannot be crappy design.

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#43

Post by [deleted] »

mannykannot wrote: post #34
noncoml wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So there were valid technical reasons Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive.

> Valid technical reasons and crappy design are not mutually exclusive. 'Valid', in this context, means that they do in fact at least diminish the arguments against the chosen solution. If you want to argue that the specific reasons given by others here do not trump your preferred solution, you should make that specific argument, instead of falling back on generalities, especially when they are not so general.

[deleted]

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#45

Post by boznz »

emilyfm wrote: post #8
noncoml wrote: post #3

999 was crappy design for "emergency" as, in the analog era, it would take almost 9x the time to dial it as that of a number like 111 or 112.

It was the only number that could not be dialled by accident by letting go of the dial too early. The aim wasn't to dial quickly, it was to avoid accidental calls. Rotary dials in New Zealand were the other way around (sending ten minus the number dialled pulses) so the emergency number there was (and still is) 111 for the same reason: the hardest to dial by accident.

Never even thought to ask the question and I live here, you learn something new every day..

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#46

Post by sambeau »

noncoml wrote: post #11
PJDK wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly the reason is analogue in nature. With pulse dialing a single pulse for a 1 could happen by accident quite easily (e.g. two lines knocking into each other). 999 can't happen accidentally. http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/hist...

Isn't that why the number 112 is usually used? Fast to dial, but not as easy to dial by mistake as 111.

Misdialling short numbers on a rotary phone was easy and common. If your finger slipped out of the dial it would return at that point and dial a shorter (lower) number. The most common point for a finger to slip was at the start of each turn, so if your finger slipped you would mostly dial ones or twos.

You cannot dial a 9 in this way.

The amount of time it took to dial 999 was inconsequential. Nothing was instant in the days when this protocol was invented.

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#47

Post by mjg59 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #41
gerdesj wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure I wont be the first or the last to point out that you are clearly too young to remember pulse dialing with a rotary input device. The whole point of 999 was that a nine was the only number you could guarantee to accurately dial blind on a rotary input device with only your sense of touch and a little knowledge about the device itself available to you. I'm also not too sure why any other number would be prefe…

I remember the emergency number being 90000 back when rotary dials were common. It's harder to misdial that 999, because you want as separated numbers as possible, and it's faster to dial because only the first 9 takes time, and then you zip through a bunch of zeroes at the end. I suspect 911 was chosen similarly.

Most rotary phone systems had 1=1 pulse, 2=2 pulses and so on, with 0=10 pulses. In that system, 0 would take even longer to dial than 9. New Zealand apparently went with 1=9 pulses, but still kept 0=10 pulses. Was there somewhere that had 0=1 pulse?

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#48

Post by sambeau »

I'm reminded of this:

  Among his other activities, Woz collects phone numbers, and his
  longtime goal has been to acquire a number with seven matching digits.
  But for most of Woz's life there were no Silicon Valley exchanges with
  three matching digits, so Woz had to be satisfied with numbers like
  221-1111. Then, one day, while eavesdropping on cell phone calls, Woz
  begin hearing a new exchange: 888. And then, after more months of
  scheming and waiting, he had it: 888-8888. This was his new cell-phone
  number, and his greatest philonumerical triumph.
  
  The number proved unusable. It received more than a hundred wrong
  numbers a day. Given that the number is virtually impossible to
  misdial, this traffic was baffling. More strange still, there was
  never anybody talking on the other end of the line. Just silence. Or,
  not silence really, but dead air, sometimes with the sound of a
  television in the background, or somebody talking softly in English or
  Spanish, or bizarre gurgling noises. Woz listened intently.
  
  Then, one day, with the phone pressed to his ear, Woz heard a woman
  say, at a distance, "Hey, what are you doing with that?" The receiver
  was snatched up and slammed down. Suddenly, it all made sense: the
  hundreds of calls, the dead air, the gurgling sounds. Babies. They
  were picking up the receiver and pressing a button at the bottom of
  the handset. Again and again. It made a noise: "Beep beep beep beep
  beep beep beep."
  
  The children of America were making their first prank call.
  
  And the person who answered the phone was Woz.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1lduxa/til_s...

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#49

Post by xnet »

noncoml wrote: post #30
gerdesj wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What I said originally was that 999 is a bad choice as it takes considerably more time to dial." You are probably not old enough to know why you use the word "dial" when you refer to pressing keys. 999 looks wrong on any phone and hence elicits a response, 112 looks like yet another extension. The only reason you associate 112 with emergency services is because that is what you have learned from an early age. I'll a…

> You are probably not old enough to know why you use the word "dial" when you refer to pressing keys. Actually it's the opposite. You sound like one who has never tried to "dial" 999 on a rotary dial when seconds are the difference between life and death. 999 in that moment feels like an awful choice. We are taking about emergency and as such the most important thing is time and not the rest of the reasons you menti…

I would say 999 is still the better choice as it is always the last stop on a rotary. I can imagine if they had it as 111, for example, a lot of people would be redialing from panicking and accidentally dialling too far.

Re: 999: The world's oldest emergency services phone number

#50

Post by xnet »

gerdesj wrote: post #21
noncoml wrote: post #3

999 was crappy design for "emergency" as, in the analog era, it would take almost 9x the time to dial it as that of a number like 111 or 112.

I'm sure I wont be the first or the last to point out that you are clearly too young to remember pulse dialing with a rotary input device. The whole point of 999 was that a nine was the only number you could guarantee to accurately dial blind on a rotary input device with only your sense of touch and a little knowledge about the device itself available to you. I'm also not too sure why any other number would be prefe…

I work on VoIP systems and 999 is set up on these as a priority dial (built into the system as "emergency number"), giving it's route out to whichever ARS is available. I cannot see this limited by the "9 for an outside line" as it bypasses these constraints, along with having to login to a phone to use 999.
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