An Interesting Look at What the Telephone Tells Us

Depending on the amount of time that you have been using the telephone, you might be fascinated to learn a little bit of history about it. I'm not necessarily talking about going all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell but I am referring to the fact that the telephone has really changed quite a bit in recent history.

Most of us are familiar with computers but it wasn't all that long ago that computers were not available and the entire telephone system was operated manually. Operators would answer the telephone calls that were coming in, find out the place where they were heading out and then manually plug them into a large switch board which was in front of them. Although this system worked well for a while, it eventually needed to be upgraded which is why the telephone company made its next move.

This is when the 10 digit telephone number came into existence and it was a huge step forward over the old system of talking to a manual operator. By being able to identify where the call was coming from and where it was going to, using this numerical system, the entire process was able to be automated.

The first three digits of the telephone number were handed out to different areas of the country and they became known as the area code. This is still true, even today. By looking at an area code, you will be able to tell a general area of where the telephone call came from. Although these area codes are being used up rather quickly, there are still plenty of them left and it should work well into the foreseeable future.

The second three digits in the telephone number are more of a localized number which can help you to break down where a telephone call is coming from or going to. Inside each area code, the possibility of 999 different numerical combinations allowed for a wide diversity and a narrow coverage for each of those numbers.

It wasn't all that long ago whenever we didn't use pushbutton telephones, and everybody had a rotary dial phone. Although these went out of service a couple of decades ago, most of the telephone systems to allow you to use a rotary system, even today. It was a large dial with numbers and you would spin the dial and allow it to spin back, the noise of the spinning letting the phone company know which number it was that you dialed.

Even though the house phone continues to be the most popular in use, many of us are moving away from using it in favor of using a cell phone. Fax machines are also in existence in almost every office and this is using up the number of different telephone numbers and area codes rather quickly. We still are not in danger of running out of area codes, but it is possible that we will see a day where the system needs to change again

It would be nice to be able to peer into the future and see what the technological advances are going to bring to us. Until that time, however, the simple 10 digit number is all that is necessary for us to talk to anybody, at any place in the country.