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Original North American area codes

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sri 1988 (talk | contribs) at 12:16, 5 July 2010 (→‎List of original area codes). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

In order to facilitate direct dialing calls, the North American Numbering Plan was created and instituted in 1947 by AT&T, also known as the Bell System. These 3 digit numbers were given to all regions throughout the United States and Canada. At first, the codes were used only by long-distance operators; the first customer-dialed calls using area codes did not occur until November 10, 1951, when the first directly-dialed call was made from Englewood, New Jersey to Alameda, California.[1] Direct dialing was gradually instituted throughout the country, and by the mid-1960s, it was commonplace in most larger cities.

Originally there were only 86 codes, with the biggest population areas getting the numbers that took the shortest time to dial on rotary telephones.[2] That is why New York City was given 212, Los Angeles given 213, and Chicago 312. Additionally, in the original plan a middle digit of zero indicated the area code covered an entire state/province, while area codes with a middle digit of one were assigned to states/provinces that were divided into more than one area code.

List of original area codes

References

  1. ^ First direct-dialed call
  2. ^ Area Code History.
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