Monday, June 22, 2009

A Look Backwards at the Telephone

By Jack Spencer

It really doesn't take much of a look back in history to find some interesting things out about the telephones that we are currently using. Alexander Graham Bell started the entire thing but it is not even necessary for us to go back to that century for the purpose of this article. Just looking back a couple of decades is interesting enough.

Just a few short decades ago, the telephone company was operated manually by a series of operators that sat behind large switch boards. Whenever a call would come in, the operator would pick up the phone and find out where it was being routed to and then they would manually plug-in in order to route the call through. The system worked well for a number of years, but eventually it needed to be upgraded and the telephone company knew that.

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 that you use whenever you are dialing a telephone number are routed to various areas of the country. Whenever the 10 digit system first came into place, these three digit numbers were assigned to specific areas, and therefore became known as area codes. At the time whenever they were first used, they seem to be in limitless supply but now they are being used up rather quickly.

The next three digits that you dial whenever you are dialing a 10 digit number is more localized than the area code. Since there are 999 different variations that can be used within any given area code, it helps you to narrow down exactly where the telephone number is going to. This also helps the computers to route the call quickly.

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

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.

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