111–120 of 145 posts
One of them contains a mini 1960s hyper-local directory of exchanges (names and numbers) on a pull-out tray. You would lookup the exchange name, dial that, followed by the handful of digits required to reach the subscriber.
The article seems to imply that in the US the names were arbitrary and just served as mnemonics? In France it worked in the same way, but the names referred to actual places: either the name of the town when it was small enough, or a district / neighborhood for larger cities. So your number would be "Trocadéro-12-45" or "Lourmel-78-98" for instance; and, starting in 1928, you could dial it in directly on your phone w…
> “My grandmother was extremely proud that her father had a very low number” In Finland, a local operator built the world’s first commercial GSM network back in 1991. They initially sold four-digit phone numbers as a perk. (Combined with the country code and the operator code, the numbers today look like this: +358 50 1234) Those short numbers are still being resold by their owners. I’ve heard some of them go for ten…
I think there's a difference from NFTs in the fact that ICQs and telephones were heavily used tools for communication, this is what lends these numbers the prestige. Since everybody used them to communicate with you, everyone saw that prestigious number.
In comparison, NFTs aren't really attached to something of value in the same way and are not interesting/prestigious to anybody outside of people interested in those NFTs specifically.
They even had this in the Simpsons in the 90s, so not even 50s era! Mr Plow gives his phone number as Klondike 5 3226 and the jingle says "KL5 3226"
The fictional KLondike exchange was often used back in the day for movie/TV phone numbers. And a look at a phone keypad shows that we would now say 555-3226...hey wait! That's exactly how we would give a fictional phone number today! (Technically, only 555-0000 thru 555-0199 are reserved for this purpose, but not every fictional number follows that rule.)
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That also explains why European emergency numbers are often 11X, including 112 which is the universal emergency number in the EU and the GSM standard (so it will work on your mobile phone too). It doesn't explain Britain using 999 or Australia using 000.
My understanding of 999 was in order to stop accidental signalling of the intent to dial the emergency number by way of noise on the line being intepreted as dial click, which this article on BBC news seems to corroborate [1]. Having said that, that doesn't really then line up with 112 for mainland European countries, unless that is a relatively modern occurrence and they historically had different emergency numbers?…
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000 makes lot of sense to me. It is the last digit available, so it can be quickly dialled.
Whether 0 comes before 1 or after 9 has been the matter of some debate! But by the time typewriters started cementing the order of things, 0 came last, and on all the rotary phones I see on google images, 0 would take the longest to dial. Do rotary phones in Australia flow backwards? xP see also: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/76446/why-is-the-0-ne...
You can't have zero clicks, so "0" would have to be 10 clicks
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Whether 0 comes before 1 or after 9 has been the matter of some debate! But by the time typewriters started cementing the order of things, 0 came last, and on all the rotary phones I see on google images, 0 would take the longest to dial. Do rotary phones in Australia flow backwards? xP see also: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/76446/why-is-the-0-ne...
With pulse dialing "1" is one click, "3" is 3 clicks, "9" is 9 clicks You can't have zero clicks, so "0" would have to be 10 clicks
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That also explains why European emergency numbers are often 11X, including 112 which is the universal emergency number in the EU and the GSM standard (so it will work on your mobile phone too). It doesn't explain Britain using 999 or Australia using 000.
My understanding of 999 was in order to stop accidental signalling of the intent to dial the emergency number by way of noise on the line being intepreted as dial click, which this article on BBC news seems to corroborate [1]. Having said that, that doesn't really then line up with 112 for mainland European countries, unless that is a relatively modern occurrence and they historically had different emergency numbers?…
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Yea, Seinfeld phone numbers were all over the place. Letters in the numbers, 5 digits numbers and then towards the end the standard 7 digit and 10 digit. I didn’t watch it contemporaneously, but rather pretty recently and I kept thinking, there’s no way the show is that old that they were still using letters in phone numbers in NYC.
I was a kid when Seinfeld aired originally and didn't find it that weird. My grandmother would often give her phone number to older people as SHerman-2xxxx. She stopped doing that after Chicago and the suburbs split 312 and the suburbs became 708 in ~1990. I can see it still being common among older people in the 90s in Manhattan until more area codes were added towards the end of the decade (there was also some rest…
As you say, I recall there was some Seinfeld episode where someone broke up with someone because they didn't have a 212 area code or something along those lines. Which wasn't a totally outlandish plot point.
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Maybe the thinking was that you can easily slip with your finger or mindlessly dial something, then accidentally dialing a 1 or 2 is much more likely than doing the same with 9 or 0 which needs ten times the pulses (and the time) needed for a 1. Having grown up with rotary phones, that would make sense to me.
The UK originally considered using 111, but there were problems in that on windy days, trees etc brushing the lines could generate momentary disconnections = a pulse = digit 1. So false calls. 999 was choosen because it was easy to find the number 9 on the dial in the dark.