What’s the deal with everything: Area Coding
My housemate Chris grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, area code 201. I’m a child of 212 myself, but as Chris recently pointed out, his area code is completely superior, since it is in fact the first area code. 0 and 1, of course, are a big no-no when it comes to starting a phone number, and area code “200″ is unused (or perhaps reserved for some service, I’m not sure), so 201 tops the list. I confess that I’d never given the ordering of area codes much thought, but apparently it’s a source of local pride for some, since Northern New Jersey is home of Bell Labs.
DC’s area code is 202 and NYC’s is 212, so one might get the mistaken impression that early area codes were ordered geographically like zip codes, but LA’s 213 quickly debunks that theory (also almost no consecutive area codes are adjacent, you clod!). Instead the original 86 area codes were assigned in 1947 based on the number of clicks they required on a rotary phone. Cities with large populations generally got codes that were fast to dial. All of the original area codes had either a 0 or 1 as the second digit, and since there was no 211, NYC’s 212 was as fast as they came. Take that 201! (Don’t feel too bad though, South Carolina got 803.)
On today’s ultra modern touchtone phones, area codes starting and ending with “5″ appear to make for the fastest average dialing times. Sadly, 555 has long since been relegated to the realm of fantasy, and 515 is being squandered on central Iowa (the realm of fantasy baseball). New York’s new 646 area isn’t too bad I suppose, but the city’s first cell phone area code, 917, is abysmal. Even so, I recently decided to claim a 917 number of my own using Google’s free service, Grand Central. That’s how all this came up, in case you were wondering. Also I was eager to write a sequel to my celebrated baby corn post, sorry there’s no cute picture this time.
Fun Fact: The middle digit of all area codes remained either 0 or 1 until 1995, when area codes with digits 2 through 8 were introduced. The number 9 is reserved as a way of implementing longer phone numbers.