How You Got Your Phone Number | Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains...

How did we get area codes for our phone numbers? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice explore the interesting history of area codes and how they came to be.
Discover how early area codes in high-population cities were determined and the underlying logic. How did major cities get their area codes? What’s the area code for Cape Canaveral? Neil has fun with phones, explains what it was like to use a rotary phone, and explores how the ingenuity of the past still has traces in the present.
Get the NEW Cosmic Queries book (5/5 ⭐s on Amazon!): amzn.to/3dYIEQF
Support us on Patreon: / startalkradio
FOLLOW or SUBSCRIBE to StarTalk:
Twitter: / startalkradio
Facebook: / startalk
Instagram: / startalk
About StarTalk:
Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!
#StarTalk #neildegrassetyson
1:05 - The Age of Rotary Phones
4:23 - Area Codes in Populous Cities
10:12 - New Age Area Codes
13:50 - Whistling Touchtones & Fun With Phones

[@StarTalk]

Check the area code for where you live against the population! If you live in a high-population area, is your area code really easy to dial?

[@extropian314]

San Antonio 210, babies

[@PantherMom512]

​@@extropian314, Yo Cuz! AustinTx 512, here! ❤

[@AgeFuture]

Jacksonville FL is the worst. 904

[@orlanino]

I would argue that numbers with the smallest number of clicks were chosen for the biggest cities to save people time. At that time telephone exchanges were mechanical, and each click was also a mechanical click within the exchange, and clicks were causing wear and tear in the relays. So, in order to minimize the maintenance, they chose area codes with the least number of clicks for cities with the largest number of calls.

[@AgeFuture]

@@orlanino this was literally what the video was about

[@James-pl2oy]

What’s also cool is that the telephone companies saved the 555 leading digits combination for use in movies and other works of fiction. So whenever you see a phone number in a movie it’s always a non-working 555 telephone number

[@MercXue]

555 numbers are all local information. It’s a direct call to a specific 411 operator.

[@revmsj]

I learned this from the 1990’s film “Last Action Hero”

[@machinarum]

These are the numbers one gives when some retail stores ask for a phone number. 😂

[@VoltisArt]

@@fansofgreatc0nt3nt29 that's the local prefix, (three middle numbers,) not area code. Prefixes also usually followed neighborhoods back before cellphones. You could tell what neighborhood lots of people were in by similar prefixes, at least before account changes shuffled them around town and population growth added more prefixes than were originally mapped. Pagers and cell numbers added to that scramble even more. Now you can't even totally rely on area code to predict where somebody is. I kept my cell number when moving across the country.

[@The.Nasty.]

“I sold weed out of phone booth once, we’re so much alike!” Chuck you are the most relatable man on the planet sometimes! 😂

[@justinwebb8831]

You've uhhh..sold weed from a phone booth too huh?

[@chriswebster24]

@@justinwebb8831Anyone who ever sold any weed, at all, back in the day, has done that. That was the only way we had to communicate, when we were away from home.

[@pushinkeys]

Neil - I once interned at Bell Labs Chuck- I once sold weed in a phone booth 😂😂😂 Gotta say I got more in common with Chuck on this one 😅😅

[@Kamilione]

We should be friends then :D

[@lg1355]

This had me rolling!😂

[@revmsj]

Same

[@thekendemetrishow]

I got both here lol Private school was dope

[@TheBeardandKD]

Right of passage in NYC, we all family.

[@robertphillips6051]

Interestingly I grew up in Montana, and remember the introduction of area codes. It was a miracle as we could call my grandmother in Idaho without using an operator. Our area code was 406. Orlando, FL is code 407. That says more people were calling Montana when I was a kid than were calling central Florida back then. That certainly has changed.

[@albertjackinson]

I think you mean more people lived in Montana back then, since the smaller area codes denote higher populations? If Montana had 406 and Orlando had 407, that meant more people were calling from Montana, not more people called Montana. Just a quick thing to point out. Your comment is still great! These little anecdotes are neat to read!

[@justinward7432]

The 0-in-the-middle area codes were originally assigned in places where entire states would be given a single area code. The thinking at the time was that people living in states that didn't need multiple area codes wouldn't frequently need to dial area codes at all, so assigning e.g. 406 or 407 or even 909 wouldn't be a big inconvenience. When area codes were first assigned, all of Montana was 406 and all of Florida was 305. As populations increased, new area codes such as 407 were introduced (407 in particular came into being in 1988. This is after touch tone dialing was introduced, and so the rotary-speed issue was moot). In order to disrupt the fewest people, though, they tried to keep the old area codes assigned to the largest cities. This is why Miami has 305 now (and why suburban MD outside of DC still has 301, Atlanta has 404, Seattle has 206, and so on).

[@SuperAzeton]

Growing up all of Alberta, Canada where I was raised was 403, so there! 😂

[@markhodge7]

Back in the 70s, a friend of mine would dial zero, and ask for the "English Operator" in some foreign country city, like Moscow. He would chat to them for a couple of minutes, mostly small talk, until the operator would politely cut off the call. It didn't cost a penny. Brilliant. Charges didn't start until the person to person call is connected.

[@effychase62]

I'm old enough (61) to remember when as a kid living in Alabama in the early 1970's, I only had to dial the last 4 numbers of a phone number to connect locally.

[@Ba_A]

That's how most calls were made back in the day, using a specific four digit number for each home. But for bigger areas there needed to be a telephone exchange to switch you to another sector with the first "three numbers" represented by a combination of three letter identifiers which mapped the city or larger towns.

[@DW-pr9hk]

the last four numbers are known as the pairing (first 3 for exchange then another first 3 again for area code) and in commercial office buildings like a hospital, you can pick up the phone and dial 4 numbers (now known as the extension) for a department.

[@FallenAnvilForge]

@@Ba_A I still have one of my Grandfather's old business cards with the letter type of number on it.

[@patriciamorgan6545]

I still remember the TV ads: "Dial Murray Hill 9-9999." My aunt's exchange was FOrest 8. My grandmother's was HA3. Funny, I didn't ever know what the HA stood for.

[@johnny_eth]

In my country (Portugal) it was the same. 01 was Lisbon, 02 was Porto. Then other reasons would have 3 numeral area code, like 011. Because numbers in those two big cities were 7 numerals long, while the other regions were 6. Eventually in the late 90s everything was normalized, the zeroes converted to 2, and all phone numbers now are 9 numerals

[@johnhenry5197]

For clarification, the rotary dial actually had a set of contacts that would make and break for every digit dialed. A 1 would make contact 1 time while a 9 would make and break the contacts 9 times. It was a set of physical contacts in the phone. (edited for wrong info. Thank You to @kenmohler4081 in these replies clarifying this. I have a better understanding of step switches now.) Early on, area codes and office codes had unique numbering plans. NNN and NXN, (please don't quote me on that). At that time, an area code only had a 1 or 0 in the middle, which the X defined (NXN), and always looked different than an office code. When we suddenly had an explosion of pagers, the US literally ran out of numbers and area codes were expanded to utilize all digits. We referred to that interchangeable area/office codes. Some older business systems could not accommodate that and needed replaced or upgraded with hardware and/or software. By expanding the usable digits in the area code, being so many places from the decimal point it opened up many more numbers for use. Of course this change happened before all numbers were exhausted but they saw it coming. Then one day touch tone came along, prior to the area code expansion, and our boss was showing off the latest touch tone phone. I recall asking him who they put the two buttons on either side of the 0. Did they think the 0 was lonely? He gave me a serious look and said "someday those are going to do something". Everyone in the room laughed when he said that. Of course the "star and pound" keys are part of things these days. When we first rolled out TT, we installed tone pulse converters ahead of the old mechanical CO switches. You may recall dialing on a TT phone and then hear the clicking in the background before the call completed. The next thing we encountered was customers complaining that they were unable to check their bank balance. (That was another new thing at the time.) We had to instruct our customers to hit the pound key after they dialed the number in order to turn off the tone pulse converter in the local office so that you could pass tone to the far end. Otherwise, you sent pulses which the far end did not recognize. My telephony career began in the mid '70's when there was very few electronic offices and no digital offices, at least in any areas where I worked. (Not the Bell System) I retired with 42 years in the business and got to see some amazing advancements.

[@s51curtis]

There's an interesting backstory how the automated telephone central office came into being. In 1878, Almon Brown Strowger was an undertaker in Kansas City. Telephone technology at that time had advanced as far as having switchboard operators, almost exclusively women, routing calls by inserting a patch cord into a jack after the calling party had requested the connection. Mr. Strowger had noticed over time that the number of calls to his undertaker business had fallen off to almost nothing. Doing some investigating, he found out that the telephone company had recently hired the wife of his major competitor to be a switchboard operator, and she was routing calls meant for him to her husband's business instead. His choices were to either try to have the loyal wife/unfair operator fired, or take her and her husband to court and sue for damages. However, Mr. Strowger was a highly intelligent man. He knew this situation was probably being repeated for dozens of other businesses, so he came up with a third solution: Automate the telephone switchboard. His invention of the Strowger switch performed the function of the line finders you describe above and eventually put thousands of telephone switchboard operators out of work.

[@johnhenry5197]

@@s51curtis It is amusing what drives progress sometimes!

[@JimCoder]

I can confirm that rotary dialing involved electrical rather than acoustic signals. The switch would "make" and "break" the switchhook circuit in the phone. I exploited this to get my TRS-80 computer's spare cassette selector relay to speed dial my phone. Acoustic may have worked as well but the dial itself used an electrical signal. This also explains what was happening in old movies when someone would frantically paddle the switchhook while shouting "Operator! Operator!" They were effectively dialing zero by paddling the switchhook ten times. That they wouldn't simply dial zero instead suggests there was no zero on dials back then but that I do not know. Fun fact: the DTMF code used by touch tone phones has a fourth column of buttons that are rarely if ever seen. I don't recall their intended use. Look it up. 🙂

[@kenmohler4081]

I was a central office repairman in the army and I learned the step-by-step system a little differently. The line finder was the first switch in the system. The line finder detected that a telephone had been lifted from the cradle. The job of the line finder was to figure out which phone that was. Once it did, and there were, as I remember, 47 mechanical steps required, it connected the phone to the first selector and put dial tone on the line. That first selector received that first dialed digit, and according to that digit, connected to the next selector in the chain. This continued over and over until only two digits remained. The final selector in the chain connected the caller to a switch called a line connector. The line connector was attached, through a big device called the main distributing frame, or just main frame, to the pair of wires going all the way to the called telephone. If that line was busy, the line connector returned a busy tone to the calling party. If the line was available, the line connector sent ringing current to the called phone and ring back tone to the calling phone. Tracing the calling number was a physical process of following the path from the line connector all the way back to the line finder. I did it many times. By the way, all of these switches were called Strowger switches. Refer to another message in this string to learn about Almon B. Strowger, the undertaker.

[@IslandGirlKelly]

This was fantastic. I had always wondered how those area codes originated.

[@bkbekka3039]

Right? and here we thought , we, were the only ones that wondered about such things. Lol

[@dgonsoulin]

Another great one! Thank you Neil and Chuck. Just to add, when touch tone came out, it was still acoustic tones that the phone would send. There were 3 columns of numbers, so each column had a note. And there were 4 rows of numbers and each row had a tone. So when you pressed a number, you were actually sending a tone that was made of 2 notes, the row and column. The kicker is, back in the day, Cap'n Crunch used to give away the Official Cap'n Crunch whistle in a box of Cap'n Crunch that had the exact tone needed to open a phone line, (trunk), to make a free long distance phone call. The guy who figured this out was nicked named "Cap'n Crunch"! He was infamous!

[@johnhenry5197]

Yes, DTMF. Dual Tone Multi Frequency, aka touch tone.

[@peppeddu]

FYI: Rotary phones don't send a clicking sound, the dial briefly disconnects the phone line (one time for "1", two times for "2", etc) and that's how the central office understands what you're dialing. This dialing system is still supported to this very day.

[@user-we6qz8de4z]

Totally right, it was an electric switch

[@dfo132]

On landline phones you could mimic it by pushing down and releasing the handset cradle to go onhook and offhook quickly. Do it once for the digit 1, twice for 2, etc.

[@valeriebarrett8714]

Interestingly the old pay phones also used sound to confirm the amount of money you put in for your call and you could get free calls if you was able to memic the correct sound. Much harder then it sounds given the tech available back then.

[@mollybell5779]

Neil, I don't know where you come up with these topics, but please keep 'em coming! When I first started watching StarTalk several years ago, I figured I would already know most of what would be discussed, and sure, I'm familiar with much of the subject matter, as I have been interested in science and astronomy since childhood. But to my surprise, I have learned so, SO MUCH from StarTalk! And many a belly laugh along the way, usually courtesy of Lord Nice. Thank you all so much. 😁❤️

[@mikotagayuna8494]

It's amazing how everyone can remember dozens of phone numbers by rote memory before mobile phones were invented. Nowadays, we can't remember anyone's number other than our own.

[@h8GW]

I don't even know why I remember my old landline numbers at two of the last places that I lived, considering I don't remember any of my high school locker combos, which I'm pretty sure I used more often. I haven't used either of them in over 15 years.

[@uex6317]

@@h8GWim guessing it has something to do with pattern recognition and how we memorise phone numbers. Like with me, theres always a tone or rhythm whenever I recite phone numbers. This helps a lot when memorising things. In contrast with your locker combos, im pretty sure you weren’t associating a rhythm or tone when inputting them 😄

[@ronaldgibson]

Those clicks is the phone toggling the switchhook of the phone. You can dial by hitting the switchhook like five times for the number 5. In 1947 area codes came out. Originally the second digit, if it is a zero, it was from a state with just one area code. In 1974 in Los Angeles, they started using area codes for prefixes. That is when we started dialing one first before the area code. In 1995, all possible combinations with the second digit being a one or a zero ran out. So they started using prefixes for area codes.

[@bvon336]

Grew up in rural NC with a 919 then 910 area code. We can assume we were at the bottom of the list 😀

[@ginamcdonald7854]

Same here in NC. We’re 910 now. Also remember my childhood phone number, as well as my grandparent’s number.

[@david.mcmahan]

Western NC was 704 (originally) but only because Charlotte was included and bumped it up, I guess.

[@MACKWESTERN]

We had prefix ELW ( Elwood) which went to a local operator . Way back we had party lines which sucked cause if your neighbor was on the line you had to wait!!

[@pleasethink4789]

Excellently interesting! Two additional pieces of info: 1. Similar to Cape Canaveral's area code, the phone number for JPL in Pasadena ends in 4321. 2. You can (or at least were able to at one point) dial a phone number on a touch tone phone by tapping the hang-up switch n-times where n is the digit in the number you want to dial (eg, if you are dialing 213..., two taps for the number 2, pause, 1 tap for the number 1, pause, 3 taps for the number 3, pause, etc)

[@PLC808]

I tried dial a number with the tap method. I got it right a few times. I stopped when the person on the other end said "911 what is your emergency? "

[@pleasethink4789]

@paulc808 Excellent! You did it right. Now, post the video of the police arriving to respond to your 911 call. 🤣

[@TheRussellStover]

Thank you for covering 321 story!

[@DW-pr9hk]

when Florida just had one area code, its first was 3 5 2 which spelled FLA. Cape Canav's came along when they chopped up the state and added 6 or 7 new areas so they could make more same numbers. Unless you live at the sates capital, you're gonna get 772 or a 407 which doesn't spell anything anymore. Then, they shortened all the states that had 3 letters down to 2 so Florida went to FLA then FL and area codes aren't 2 numbers so goes the evolution of the technological revolution.

[@superstormday993]

I've been in/around the phone system and companies. I always love learning stuff related to developing the system. Great show.

[@mmgibson1]

I've been a resident of Rhode Island all my life - when I was growing up I remember that my state was one of the few that had one area code for all of it. I seem to recall that there were some other states in New England that also did that but I was going to check in the telephone book to see if I could find the map of the country with all of its area codes, and then I remembered they stopped printing the books years ago and I finally had to throw my last copy out because it was falling apart. That was a 2005 issue - how we all managed to survive in such primitive conditions is amazing, and how I managed to grow up despite doing risky things like answering the telephone without knowing who was on the other end (back before caller ID) is nothing short of miraculous.

[@revmsj]

I’ve never met anyone that was actually from Rhode Island! Is it true that Peter Griffin is your state bird?! Also, do you guys all really spell the word “road” with an H, no A, and end it with a superfluous E??🤔

[@JillKnapp]

Hi there from another small state! 🙂 Delaware is all 302, even now. It feels so cute and local to just tell someone 7 numbers.

[@ph5915]

@@JillKnapp I'm here too! Love the 3-0-2!

[@seamusmcfadden994]

Here in the 302. Delaware. We still only have one!🤣

[@ph5915]

@@seamusmcfadden994 I'm here too! Long live the 3-0-2!😁

[@randolphphillips3104]

I had the dialer thing that made click code. As a young adult I had a phone with a switch between tones and clicks. That way, if my local switch was old it would click, but we were starting to see businesses with answering switches where you could enter an extension, but they needed tones.

[@RetNemmoc555]

My friend had a tone dialer to get into her carrier's network.

[@Wis_Dom]

We had a dial phone in the 80's but we also had touch tones. And a sliding wood grain cable box 🤣. But the coolest phones to have back then were either the Garfield phone, the see-thru phone or the sports illustrated football phone, lol!

[@davidnievesjr.9478]

Who else still remembers their childhood home phone number? I'll never forget when they switched from one area code to two in my home state. Went from 203 everywhere to 860 and 203. One weird thing is I have been in MA for over a decade and every time I give my phone number I also have to give the area code, like its not obvious. What's cool, though, is that since cell phones with unlimited minutes became "normal" there's no more long-distance charges.

[@nickbisson8243]

That must have been late 90's early 2000's Pretty sure I was still in Highschool when they added the 860

[@revmsj]

I’m 41 this past January and my mom still has our childhood phone number. #NeverForget!✊🏾

[@KristenRowenPliske]

I do, from both houses but neither line exists any more. I bet my mom would remember her parents’ phone number, if I asked. (She’s also from MA)

[@BettyAlexandriaPride]

I still remember, and I'm willing to purchase it if I could. 🥺

[@josephinerogers79]

I still remember the phone number we had the longest during the late 80s. Everyone's phone number was always only 7 digits long unless we were calling long distance. But our state only had one area code. I also remember using a rotary phone during the early 80s and since I was only 6 yrs old and younger at the time, I thought it was so fun to spin the dial. 😄

[@anthonyshiels9273]

When I got my first touchstone telephone I remember playing "Auld lang syne" on the keypad during a call to a friend. He was very impressed with my musical prowess.

[@stephencarlsbad]

I remember as a child picking up my grandparents rotary phone and dialing the operator and then hanging up and then my grandmother calling the operator back and apologizing. The operator was on a first name basis with some in the community including my grandmother. Apparently the switch operator had was chatting with my grandmother one day and explaining to her how the new phone system was just about complete and how she was going to be out of a job soon and that this was the last time she would be able to speak to my grandmother as her operator. I then listened to my grandmother console her and thank her for being her operator. I asked one day about the switch operators having the ability to listen in on conversations, and I was told that they could but that this behavior was very frowned upon and basically no one with any good moral virtue would ever do that. Nowadays, computer programs capture everything we say online, over email, private messenger and even phone calls.

[@sapelesteve]

Another excellent explainer Neil! Next up you should explore how Zip Codes were created. 👍👍

[@MikeS91712]

Wikipedia has a pretty good article about ZIP codes if you're interested.

[@amyann3383]

I have 2 great suggestions for future Startalk Explainer videos. #1: An Explainer on shooting stars. #2: An Explainer on how solar panels work.

[@ShLBh]

Interestingly in India they planned shorter 2 digit area codes for metro cities, 3 digit area codes for other major cities and then 4 digit area codes for smaller towns. Also to add the length of phone numbers (in respective cities and towns) were adjusted accordingly so the (area code)+(phone number is always standard length.

[@jerzeyguy71]

That was so informative!! thank you!!

[@jaymiller2268]

Very interesting topic. We take these things for granted, and it's always fascinating to learn how & why they came to be. Great stuff!!!

[@marcusloftis2779]

I go on a 3 night camping trip twice a year with a very good group of friends and we all have very different opinions about lots of things that mostly don’t matter. I can’t imagine how great the conversation around the campfire would be with these guys there!

[@amberhiggins6327]

Los Angeles has more than one Area code now. One of the is 818

[@MeisterEMH]

I uses to work at a big company, everyone had their own desk phone. Internally, you would just dial the last five of the phone number to reach another employee, but dial all 10 digits from outside the company. Same with dialing TO the outside - all 10 digits, but dial 9 first. Had a coworker whose last five of his work phone happened to start with the same 3 digits as the local area code. So, for anyone trying to dial to outside, and forgot to dial 9 first, would sometimes reach my coworker- they would dial all 10 digits, but after 5 digits his phone would ring, he would pick up and hear them finish dialing. He finally had his # changed.

[@MrT------5743]

That was just a PBX or private branch exchange. Similar to a small or mini central office (CO) that was just for your company or building. Dialing 9 gets yoi outside of your PBX and to the local phone company.

[@theduder2617]

When I was 5 years old, you could use the rotary phone and dial your own number. Soon as the last number finished clicking off you hung up and your phone would ring. Used to drive my grandma nuts until she caught me. I didn't know how to plug the phone back in at that age. lol

[@chaserivers4058]

I remember being able to dial a number with just the switch (plunger) of the phone… imitating the pulse dailer. I also learned (while watching a repairman) that if you called the operator and said “drop line ID” the operator would tell you the phone number from which you were calling from.

[@sq8540]

When our area introduced 10 digit phone numbers from seven for local calls, my mother could remember seven digit numbers easily but could never understand that the 10 digit numbers with area code were not long distance within certain codes. (It was the first inkling of dementia in her case).

[@revmsj]

@angryperson9464seriously! At first I’m all “awww that’s so sweet…” then I’m all “😢….”

[@skiddaddleonOkC]

The earliest area codes all had a 0 or 1 as the second digit. If you do an update or continuation of this topic, I'd like to see some info on when and how it was expanded.

[@VeniBibiCani]

The pulses on rotary dials weren’t actually acoustic instructions. The pulses opened the circuit the given amount of times, akin to flicking a light switch off and on four times for the digit 4. So for instance, if you were fast and evenly paced enough you could dial a 4 by pushing down and releasing the buttons on the telephone hook four times. Took a lot of practice as the switches were designed to operate reliably between ten and twelve pulses per second (used to maintain that type of equipment back in the day). Outside of that speed range you were likely to get a wrong number. Touch tone dials have a 3x4 or 4x4 matrix of tones and each button is a combination of two tones. In order to whistle a phone number you would have to be able to whistle the correct frequencies of two tones at once. Good party trick if you can do it.

[@mikeh720]

hence "Whistler's" nickname in the Robert Redford movie Sneakers

[@donaldsmith8648]

I've got ho-s!!! In different area codes!! 😅

[@MadDragon75]

I'm in the 805th.

[@dawnhansen7886]

I LOVE STARTALK ❗️ I SERIOUSLY LOVE STARTALK !! I GET HAPPY FOR EVERY VIDEO ❕️

[@nerd9347.]

I’ve wondered about this topic for goodness knows how long. Thank you guys for being --awesome!

[@paulmichals]

In the 1970 I had a brother-in-law who knew the number the phone repair person would dial then hang up the phone and the phone switch (the place where trunk line terminated and wiring to the houses started) would automatically ring that phone number back. A simple wait to troubleshoot if the physical device in the home had an issue receiving calls.

[@redmatrix]

The original ring-back number for testing.

[@PeterBuffon]

I love everything you do Neil!!!!!! Keep the good work!!!!

[@IansUToob57]

what a great walk down memory lane AND a mindblower about the "why!" Definitely was a 212 kid (Staten Island) and remember when touch tones hit. Totally played Mary Had a Little Lamb on it!

[@eddy2561]

Doc, you forgot the infamous "Blue Box" for making free long distance phone calls ...I owned one for a while and it worked until AT&T figured how to defeat it and with the FBI began catching those that used one.

[@redmatrix]

You were such a phreak!

[@randomkindness1470]

lemme pause the video here and just throw uncle chuckSOnice some love... my happiness energy just went up a lot thnx to him

[@CatioChic3catsJazz]

What makes this show work so well (besides all the great INFO) is Chuck making Neil laugh

[@ericstarszak2076]

Makes sense. Here in rural western Colorado we are 970

[@MrLeeh380]

Good one guys, in the early 70s I could dial our home number and it would open the line to talk and hear myself.

[@keviny1936]

We had two sets of friends, it was cheaper if we wanted to talk to call the person who lived in the middle and do a three-way call, because for the people on the ends it was a local call to the middle person. But to dial directly from one end to the other it would have been long distance.

[@s2snider]

I had never considered how long it took to dial any area code, so this is interesting. I don't know this first hand, but I'd wager the area code assignments had nothing to do with benefiting telco customers. Instead, I suspect these decisions were cost-based. Here's my logic: if the most-dialed phone numbers also required less time to dial, the equipment would spend a shorter amount of time for each call. Thus, the telco could handle more calls per piece of equipment.

[@daytimerocker3808]

i think it served many purposes!

[@jgonzalezvalle]

Some office phones had a lock inserted in #1 to prevent its unauthorized use, however, you could hit those pins on top of the phone that were used to hang up, and hit them the exact number of times to dial each number adding a pause between them. Each "click" was read as the clicks of the rotary dial. It worked!

[@danielcarroll3358]

I learned how to do that in college in the 60s. About ten years ago I was in a museum in Germany that had a Strowger (step by step relay) telephone exchange on display. You could dial a given three digit number, watch all the stepping relays do their thing and it would ring a phone. All the grammar school (OK Grundschule) kids were trying it out. When I dialed using the hookswitch (for that is what it is called) they were confused. Aha! I hadn't lost my touch.

[@bobperrine6193]

As always I learned something and was also very entertained.

[@joppadoni]

Being British we didn't have this so much, we started with hammering the receiver buttons if no one answered when lifting the earpiece and then asked to speak to Lord Durr durr durr.. then it all got complicated.. Haha. I love StarTalk so much

[@nelsrinden510]

Startalk is my favorite program because things thre talk about usually has no inhherent value EXCEPT that is interesting and amazingly fun to listen to.

[@MondoLeStraka]

Back in my day, we had rotary phones and we were thankful! Then we walked ten miles in the snow, even in the summer! And we were thankful!

[@bobbyddupuy]

"I sold weed out of a phone booth, once." Chuck is so funny

[@earthwater9964]

Stunning, thanks so much

[@lcflngn]

My grandparents never got over the cost of long distance calls. I always felt rushed & left hanging, but I realized later they were just feeling like the whole shebang was costing a fortune, even when it really wasn’t.

[@ArtAmol]

Brilliant! Thank you!

[@fwinterzlodig152]

Hey Neil, can you make a video on why all planets orbit the sun in the same plane? This is fascinating and I can’t understand why

[@redmatrix]

I think he has. Anyhoo, it's thought to have arisen from an amorphous cloud of gas and dust in space. The original cloud was spinning, and this spin caused it to flatten out into a disk shape. The sun and planets are believed to have formed out of this disk, which is why, today, the planets still orbit in a single plane around our sun.

[@TagiukGold]

It has to do with the mutual gravity and orbits. Being in the same plane is the lowest energy state. If a planet was eccentric, there would be forces pulling it into a plane. Imagine a system with a sun, a Jupiter sized planet, and an earth sized inner planet at an eccentric orbit.

[@jasminyala3231]

Planets orbit the earth not the sun,

[@ElShotte]

"Chuck I got a quick one for you" - 15 minute video. 🤣🤣 Love it.

[@tomschmidt381]

Interesting trip down memory lane. I agree area codes were optimized to minimize dialing time for large urban centers. However I question whether it was to save person "finger time" or reduce the quantity of equipment needed to respond to the dialed digits. The central office equipment can not begin to establish the long distance connection until all three digits are dialed. The longer it takes to dial the number the more equipment Ma Bell needed to install. Another bit of dialing trivia. Because a rotary dial interrupts the line current to signal the digit, the number 5 is 5 line interruptions for example Office Codes do not (did not) begin with a 1 since noise on the like would be interpreted as the beginning of a dial sequence. Dialing 1 as a long distance prefix was pressed into service for direct distance dialing to indicate to the switching equipment expect an area code (10 digits) rather then a local call (7 digits). Also initially area codes had either a 1 or 0 as the middle digit to distinguish them from office codes. We modern computer system these restrictions no long apply allowing a vast expansion of possible telephone numbers. We take being able to easily connect to anyone for granted now a days but it was a significant engineering challenge to make it happen.

[@walthooker1434]

Hi Neil and Chuck. Great stories. I thought the reason the highly populated cities had the shortest area code dialing times was the phone companies had dial-tone equipment that remained in use until the number was completed and connected. To save money in dial-tone equipment, the phone companies minimized the amount of time it took to complete each call that was dialed. If the highly populated cities at that time had 'longer' area codes, more money would have been required to buy more equipment. Not sure the PUCs of the day realized this when they approved the telephone rates. I also think there were stories of kids accidentally dialing numbers before the area codes were officially introduced and being connected to unsuspecting phones clear across the country. You two cover some really interesting topics. Thanks, and keep them coming.

[@GDog-xl6kr]

You guys are the best!!!! Keep it up 👍🏼

[@dafuzze3]

Awesome explainer

[@dvuemedia]

Interesting topic. San Antonio TX and surrounding areas used to be area code 830. In the 90s, they isolated San Antonio and gave it 210 area code. And now they added 726 which spells "SAN". I'm not sure if it was on purpose or by accident.

[@johnny_eth]

In the 90s tone phones were introduced which replaced rotary phones. With those, dialing any number takes just as much time.

[@redmatrix]

Wasn't it 512 before 210?

[@revmsj]

830 huh? I live in Charleston SC and when I was a kid out area code was 803. I’m relatively sure it was state wide back then. We now have at least 2 but probably more. We are 843 now and I believe Columbia still retains the 803 code.

[@dvuemedia]

@@redmatrix You are right. The 512 area code was used for most of south-central Texas including Austin. Looks like Austin kept the 512 area code, and San Antonio and surrounding areas got 210 and 830 codes. I remember the change, because people didn't like it.

[@dfo132]

@@johnny_eth The 90s??? The house my dad had built had a touch tone phone when we moved in in 1966. It was such a new thing that the phone didn’t have * or # keys. They hadn’t been invented yet.

[@WWTormentor]

Growing up in LA we had the 213 area code. Then they changed it to 818, then to 626. Now there are about 15 different area codes in Los Angeles county alone!

[@MaxMetalPower]

My boy Neil!!

[@TheChaseCollectorGWP]

Just a tide bit on area codes. Knoxville Tennessee is 865 for VOL for the Tennessee Volunteers

[@likemeordont5951]

Thanks, fellas . That was fun.

[@RebeccaCuff]

OMG Chuck, thank you for cracking me up!

[@Swish_God]

8:30 👌🏽👌🏽 here for the fun info but this is the treat i like to here! 🙌🏾🙌🏾MY CITY DETROIT ‼️‼️😂😂

[@godkingathleticsllc4218]

Good stuff!!!

[@FallenAnvilForge]

I remember when local calls only required 5 numbers Then again, I remember party lines too.

[@vcoolpool]

Analog vs digital, brilliant!

[@dfo132]

I definitely already knew Neil’s story of how the first area codes were created because I wrote software for long distance routing systems in the 70s.

[@LAURABOHDAN]

A bit more information has to be added: When you lifted the handset off the base unit a “dial tone” began and a viable line opened. The phone company only started billing when your call was connected, not during your dialing time. So it was in their best interest to reduce your dialing time. Love Laura

[@mountiedm]

I read the whole protocol once...it's impressive. The AT gms stuff

[@jangerman4487]

A radio station morning show in L.A. (Mark & Brian) once broadcast the dial tone for 411, asking everyone to pick up their phone and hold it near the speaker beforehand. It worked. My phone called 411.

[@AwaraPunjabiz]

I like the laughs and expalanation of Neil :)

[@danielbalboa4537]

My city was 512 area code for a long time until February 13 1999 it was reduced to 361...Corpus Christi Tx...Austin Tx stayed 512 . ..great info Chuck and Professor Tyson 👍

[@redmatrix]

The RGV got 210 in Fall of 1992, and then 956 in Summer of 1997. (we were 512 also)

[@1a1u0g9t4s2u]

Did not know about the method for establishing the area codes. Do remember there was a device on the black market that would use the tones to make non billable long distance calls. Then there was a short fad with a device that a person could select custom ring tones. Nice video reminiscing about the advancement of technology (kinda sidestepped the Astro stuff though). Thanks for sharing.

[@jpdemer5]

The infamous "blue box" of the early 1970s - a popular item in college dorms - built by "phone phreaks" who had a bit of electrical engineering know-how. There were ominous warnings of dire consequences from the authorities, but nobody I knew ever got into trouble over it. The phone company eventually figured out a scheme to defeat it, and it faded away. (I wonder if any examples made their way into museums.)

[@markhodge7]

Very nice, Neil.

[@delilah5366]

SUPER content!!

[@topspacesource]

Sold weed out of a phone booth was halarious!😆. Its still amazing how a current traving over a phone cable, can be converted to audio voice over the phone. Having a cell phone doesn't even seem like it should actually exist.😎

[@candyamo7138]

Love this one

[@amplemind9739]

Never knew that, makes so much sense lol

[@JasonCliftJones]

In the UK, landline area codes are at least partially based on the name of the place, using the letters associated with each number, a-la texting. All landline numbers start 01 followed by the code specific to the area; e.g. Cambridge starts CA so the next 2 digits are 22 (then it's the 3rd code, so 01223). It was just 0 instead of 01 until the mid-90's, so the scribbled phone number early in The Theory of Everything starting 0223 was once accurate for Cambridge (though a few years off in the setting).

[@nostradamus2625]

Acoustic signaling was possible with DTMF not pulse signaling. When the dial clicked, it was actually closing and opening the circuit to the telephone exchange, the current pulses drove a rotary mechanism to move a specific number of contacts to automatically route it to the next stepping relay. Back in the day, they used to lock the dial to prevent opportunists from dialing out and having the owner incur long distance charges. It was possible to dial out by clicking the handset switch, of course they’d have to kinda match the rate of the pulse dialer and the pauses for it to work.

[@Msvalexvalex]

I used to play music with the dial tones! The trick was to call a busy number (can't remember how I found that number but it was always busy), then you could play 🎶🎶😊. I used the busy signal as a metronome.

[@Msvalexvalex]

Hymn to Joy was my best performance. 😂

[@Lisa.Carroll]

Very interesting.

[@tenahbee9292]

This is a very interesting video.

[@FerdinandCesarano]

Another comment from me. Dr. Tyson seemed to say that all the original area codes had 1 in the middle, and that area codes with 0 in the middle came about with the advent of touch tones. In fact, all original area codes had either 1 or 0 in the middle. A middle digit of 0 indicated that the area code covered an entire state, such as 201 for all of New Jersey.

[@eyeiess]

Dial phone aka rotary phone

[@sylvesterwright5173]

Can you do an explainer on dew point vs relative humidity please

[@podiatanapraia]

Oh no!! I used to live in Chapel Hill, NC, when I was a kid, and our area code was 919 and I never knew how sad that was until today. 😢

[@thewonderfulplants5216]

Would be awesome if there is something to know about like what we did in this video, about the country code when putting in the phone number.

[@FerdinandCesarano]

Upon the introduction of the 718 area code, 212 stayed with Manhattan and the Bronx. Only later did the Bronx get shifted from to 212 to 718.