Today’s telephone is quite a different device that the phones of only 40 or fifty years ago. Recent history has seen the vintage rotary phones change quite significantly.
If you are middle aged it’s quite possible that your parents used a telephone that required the intervention of a human operator in order to complete a phone call. These operators manually connected a wire from the caller’s signal and then connected it to the receiver’s line. The operator literally “connected” the call and then disconnected the wire when the call was over. Not many years passed before the phone company realized that this process needed to be automated to increase efficiency.
Rotary Phone History: Ten Digit Telephone Numbers
About this time the 10 digit telephone number came on the scene and human operators were a thing of the past. Using a ten digit numerical system to identify the source of the call and it’s intended destination the entire calling process was automated. The area code was instituted at this time, with the first 3 digits of the number being assigned to a particular area or region of the country. True still today, this area code gave a general idea of where a call was coming from or going to.
The second three phone digits, often called the “exchange”, identify a smaller geographic region where phones with the same exchange number are located. Each area code had 999 possible combinations within each exchange, resulting in a high number of phone numbers being available within each area code.
Rotary Telephone History: Push Buttons Overtake the Rotary Dial
At about this time the change from the classic rotary phone to the more modern push button phone began to take place. The vintage rotary phone that many of us grew up with was starting to be replaced and would ultimately be taken out of service. The old dial phone was becoming a relic.
The good news is that today classic rotary phones are being collected and restored back to their original working conditions. You can sometimes find one of these gems in a flea market or garage sale.
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