A Look Backwards at the Telephone

By Jack Spencer

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.

The 10 digit telephone system came into existence during this time, and it is one that we are still familiar with using today. The computers that are at the telephone company are able to use the various parts of this 10 digit number in order to route the calls effectively and without delay. By recognizing where the number is coming from and where it is going, it is not necessary to manually plug-in switches any longer.

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 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.

We have moved quite a bit away from the house phone now and many of us are exclusively using cellular telephones in order to place all of our calls. The fax machine is also becoming increasingly popular and as a result, more and more area codes are being used up regularly. Even though it wasn't all that many years ago that we didn't carry cell phones around, most of us could not imagine that day ever coming again.

It is difficult to tell what the future is going to hold for us as far as the telephone and technology are concerned. For at least the foreseeable future, however, we will be using the 10 digit number and the area code in order to place our calls.

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