Talk:Telephone number

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Contents 1 Help with new content 2 Rotary phone engineering 3 112 4 New Zealand opposite? 5 10 digit dialing 6 Question about Manx Telecom 7 Cut paste from other article lazy? An improvement? 8 Alexander Graham Bell did NOT invent telephone 9 Telephone number retirement 10 Why Telephone number and not Telephone numbers? 11 Woz's number 12 length of phone numbers 13 Section suggestion

[edit] Help with new content

I am not exceptionally well versed in the histroy of the telephone system, so before I go add to this with regard to discussing how area codes, exchanges and even subscriber numbers arose out of a need for automation and from increasing propogation of the telephone system throughout the country, maybe someone else could put it better?? --DigitalSorceress

[edit] Rotary phone engineering

I heard that in the early days (before touch tone phones) of telephone exchange, each dail pulse from the telephone set actually kicked an electro-mechanically device at the exchange one step to make a different physical connection. i.e. the device turned 9 steps before it connects to the circuit for 9. For the same reason, emergency number is 999 in the UK because random glitches would be likely to keep the number 111 ringing off the hook. I bet there are still many retired telephone technicians out there to confirm or deny this information.

Hi, you heard right, but it is not so long ago. I do not know the exact date the UK switched off the last electro-mechanical exchange, certainly after 1985. I can only speak for the UK, here the pulse dial phones still work - most phone lines are configured to accept both touch tone and pulse dialling so that old phones still work on the modern lines. I don't think it is possible to buy an new pulse dial phone anymore though. The old Strowger exchanges worked in the manner you describe. Other technologies, such as Crossbar, used a counting circuit made from relays to count the number of pulses dialled. There were also semi electronic exchanges which used an early form of computer control but still worked with pulse dialling. Examples in the UK are TXE2 and TXE4. To my knowledge, there are non of these left working. user:Perry Bebbington

[edit] 112

112 isn't just European. 112 is the international emergency number, which is supposed to be accepted everywhere, at least on GSM mobiles. -- SJK

Its part of the GSM standard and its a european standard but i don't think it works on landlines in the rest of the world. Plugwash 02:42, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Zealand opposite?

Can anybody tell me if there's any truth to the story I heard that in New Zealand rotary dial phones had the numbers arranged in the opposite order to everywhere else, i.e. starting from 9 with the shortest journey to the stop. This would account for why the emergency services number is 111, analogous to the UK's 999 which was chosen in preference to 111 because a single pulse could have been created by touching wires in the wind, so they went for generating as many pulses as possible (if you see what I mean!). Arwel 23:56, 7 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] 10 digit dialing

In 1995 when the NAPA started to use other than "0" and "1" as their middle digit in the NPA (area code), They should have went to 10-digit dialing in all areas. Since Nxx's begine with 2-9, this now would be the fourth digit in a telephone number, making it possible to have 2,000,000 more phone lines in each NPA. My old area code used to be 512. Since dialing the area code to call your neighbor, the first digit I would have dialed was "5." A telephone number such as 512-000-0001 is possible. It wouldn't connect to the operator only because you dialed "5" first and not "0". I know a lot of areas in the country now has to dial 10-digit dialing to make a local call. Worse part is military or common travellers (like salesmen) would get used to dialing either a 7 digit or 10 digit number, then turn around move to the opposite, they would have the tendacy to forget and may end up getting charged for a local call. This in essecence would have saved NAPA in assigning new NPA's for quite awhile.

[edit] Question about Manx Telecom

I'm querying :

The telephone service in the United Kingdom was originally provided by local city councils, until in 1912 all except the telephone service of Kingston-upon-Hull, Yorkshire, were bought out by the Post Office. Post Office Telephones also operated telephone services in the Channel Islands (Jersey and Guernsey), and the Isle of Man, until 1969], when the Islands took over responsibility for their own postal and telephone services.

I know Jersey and Guernsey took over their Post and Telecoms in 1969 'cos that's when they started issuing stamps. However the Isle of Man didn't start issuing stamps until 1973, and I wonder if the same applies to Manx Telecom? -- Arwel 22:45, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Seek and you will find - http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_man.html Mintguy 22:52, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK, thanks! -- Arwel 22:55, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Cut paste from other article lazy? An improvement?

I can't believe the laziness that led someone to chop out a whole load of stuff and dump it in Telephone numbering plan while just sticking the link randomly at the end of a paragraph. Was that supposed to be an improvement? It's sloppy. Sure it may have been a good idea to split the article, but a tiny bit of consideration for readers would not have permitted this to happen. 82.35.17.203 19:37, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Alexander Graham Bell did NOT invent telephone

I think i read some where that it is now well accepted that Bell did not invent telephone[[1]]. Even US government acknowledged that this guy was not honest sometimes a go[[2]] wkm

I read it up in my school book that Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone, but Thomas Edison improved the telephone.--Sean gorter 05:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Telephone number retirement

Hi. Is there anything we can say about retiring telephone numbers? What I mean is, if you cancel your subscription and then get a new number, what happens to the old one. Thanks a lot to everyone who has worked on this article. 207.174.201.18 00:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd imagine the exact details vary by country but in general i think the number is kept vacant for a while (possiblly with a message about the previous owner) and then re-used. Plugwash 02:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

See section 5 (Interecepted number)Jim.henderson 05:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why Telephone number and not Telephone numbers?

I came to this page wondering why it is common to refer the subject of the article as a telephone number, when it is actually made up of 7 or more numbers, depending on the country. A single telephone number of 5558918 would be said as 'five million, five hundred and fifty eight thousand, nine hundred and eighteen' or similar, whereas it's generally spoken as 'five five five eight nine one eight', seven distinct numbers. Anyone able to find some further information on this oddity? 86.6.0.88 14:45, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

It is only 'five five five eight nine one eight'in some countries. In France, for example, it would read "55 58 91 8". In operation it is actually one number as you don't put in spaces when dialing. The way it is said or listed is to make remembering it easier. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by IMcDonald5 (talk • contribs).

I suspect its historic, in the early days phone numbers would be only within a local area (with the area just said to the operator for long distance calls) and in this case it would be a single moderate sized number. Gradually the numbers were extended with systems first to cover areas within cities then areas (including the aforementioned cities) within a country and finally to allow direct dialing worldwide. Plugwash 16:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Woz's number

From reading the wired article, it seems that Woz had 888-8888, not 888-888-8888. The later of which would be hard to dial without dialing the 1 first to dial long distance. So it wasn't the children of America dialing him, it was the children in his area code. Had it been the children of America, it probably would have been thousands of calls a day. I'm going to fix the article. -- Suso 02:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. Bear in mind that cell phones do not require a 1 first. -- DBooth 21:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] length of phone numbers

I just read in The Tipping Point (with reference to Jonathan Cohen) that Bell wanted the telephone number to be easily memorizable and chose not to exceed seven digits. Can anyone comment on that? --Ben ^T/_C 13:56, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section suggestion

Please add a section or pointer to official international telephone number format! I.e., how is one supposed to write an international phone number? Perhaps this would be a starting point: http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/reference/tel-fmt.html -- DBooth 21:16, 3 April 2007 (UTC)