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.

It wasn’t all that long ago whenever a human operator sat at a large switchboard and manually connected different phone calls that were taking place. By plugging in a wire to wherever the phone call was being routed to, they have the power to connect and disconnect at will, the phone calls that were under their control. It was not very long, however, until the phone company began to see the need to automate the system a little bit further.

It was during this period of time whenever they came up with the 10 digit telephone system, the same one that we are using today. Using this system, the computers at the phone company were able to identify where the telephone number was originating from and then they could automatically connect it to whatever number it was dialing. It automated everything, removing the process of having somebody manually plug things in.

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.

After you dial the area code, you will next dial another three digits that will narrow down where your telephone call is going even further. Inside each area code, a combination of some 999 different numbers is available. These are typically assigned to a small area within a city or perhaps a town of medium or smaller size. These three numbers help the computers at the telephone company to route the call even faster.

Most of us are familiar with the pushbutton telephones that are currently being used but just a few short decades ago, the rotary phone was in existence. If you are unfamiliar with the rotary phone, it was a telephone with a large dial on the front which spun in a clockwise direction. You would put your finger in the hole that corresponded with the number that you were dialing and spin it to the right. As it would spin back, a number of clicks would be audible which would let the telephone company know which number you were dialing.

Now, we have cellular telephones and fax machines that are eating up an enormous amount of telephone numbers, along with using additional area codes from the available pool of numbers. Most of us could not imagine a day whenever we did not have the cellular phone, but it wasn’t all that long ago that nobody carried them around.

As we continue to push on in the future, it’s difficult to tell where the telephone company and technology is going to take us. Until that time, however, the simple area code in 10 digit telephone number will continue to be something that we can use to our benefit.

Tags: area code lookup, business, Cell Phone, cell phones, cellular phone, House and Home, personal, phone systems, reverse number lookup, technology, telephone, Telephones

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 7:28 am and is filed under House and Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.