Why 911?

[fragger]

I've been wondering this for a while now: Why is the emergency number in the USA 911, as opposed to, say, 999 or 111? I would have though that three of the same digit would be quicker and easier to punch in than one digit once and another digit twice. I'm curious as to how that came about. Maybe all same-three-digit numbers were already in use for other things, like area codes or something?

Here, the emergency number is 000, and in the UK I believe it's 999. I don't know what other countries have.

I always thought 000 was an odd choice too, mind you. I would have thought 111 would have been better, because (as with 911) the "emergency number" was created when telephones still had mechanical dials and not buttons, and since 0 has further to travel on a dial than 1 (and the dial has further to return), 111 would have been a much quicker number to dial in an emergency, when every second might count. But they picked the digit that's furthest away from the stop Must have been a council committee decision

Come to think of it, it's funny how we still sometimes say "dial a number". When did you last see a phone with a dial on it?

"Push M For Murder", lol

[Art Blade]

lol yeah, "hack in 911 if you've got a problem"

here it's 110 for police and 112 for fire/emergency

[Dweller_Benthos]

911 was chosen to w0#k around existing area codes and other telephone company (AT&T at the time) internal codes or something like that. It's easy to remember and not as easy to dial accidentally like a three digit code of all the same number. It was implemented when most phones were still using dials on pulse systems (1960s) so probably not as fast as 111 or something like that but almost and lessens the number of accidental dials like when the 3 year old is playing around dialing random numbers.

We had a rotary phone up until the phone company stopped requiring you to rent the phone. Probably late 70s or early 80s. Maybe mid 80s. We still didn't have tone service though, so we had a Radio Shack phone with a switch to go from pulse to tone and you'd hit the numbers on the keypad and you'd hear the pulse signal going tick-tick-tick through all the numbers you just keyed in. So it still took just as long to dial in a number with a lot of 9s in it as it would have on a rotary phone. Then it took the phone company another 10 years or so to offer tone dialing but made you pay extra for it. It was another few years before they offered it for free. Not sure if you can even get a pulse signal anymore, I'd think the phone systems have all been converted over to tone, though I think the acoustic system is still in place so you might be able to still hook up a rotary phone and have it w0#k. Not sure about that.

[nex]

Hey, here in South Africa we're educated, we, especially our young ones,
and the illiterate, we can memorize a bunch of numbers...............
Cops - 10111
Ambulance/fire dept - 10177
Mobile Phones only need to dial - 112  The operator will patch you through
Oh, there's a few more, each Province (9) have their own numbers   

[Art Blade]

 

D_B, I went through the same phone development as you, and you described it so nicely it triggered several memories.. lol

[fragger]

Thanks for the responses, guys And D_B, thanks for clearing that up. That does make sense.

With the nation-wide switch to the NBN (National Broadband Network) still going on here, all the old analog phone services are being phased out in favour of fully-digital. The day will come when there will be no analog left (same with free-to-air TV, there is no analog anymore, it's now all digital). The switch was to have been completed by 2016 and was originally going to be fiber-optic to all premises, but of course, successive groups of inept, squabbling penny-pinchers (more commonly known as "governments") applied various forms of hamfisted cost-cutting measures to it so that it has become a mixture of fiber, copper and wifi, and as of 2019 is still far from being completely rolled out. It has resulted in the system being direct fiber connections to some premises and to local wifi-node for others (and thence via in-house hub), mainly in rural areas like my own and pretty much everyone in the country. Typical... we bumpkins always get the bum end of everything

It works okay where I am, I have about as good a connection as I had before - it doesn't drop out, nor do I get serious lags. But the thing is, the NBN governs telephone service as well as internet, and unlike with the old analog phone system, if there is a power outage the phones go dead as well. At least with the old system you could still use the landline phone when the power was cut. We had a big outage during a nasty thunderstorm about a month ago which took out everything in the area for about eight hours, including the microwave service, so I couldn't even use my mobile (there's just the one tower around here, and it somehow got affected by the outage as well). We were in the dark for all that time, both literally and figuratively, with no way to find out what the story was. It was unusual for the tower to go dark as well, first time that's happened.

[Art Blade]

I keep finding it fascinating when I read about power outages. The last one I actually remember was when a bulldozer cut a power line and the whole block where my office was went dark while around us there were lights everywhere.

That happened about 25 years ago.

[fragger]

I'm over 300 kays from the nearest capital city I'm surprised we have as few outages as we do, especially given this region's propensity for generating thunderstorms in the summer months, for whatever reason. We seem to have one a week on average around this time of year.

[Art Blade]

just as your custom title says, "preceded by thunder!"

Spoiler

better than "followed by outage!"

[fragger]

 

[nex]

In South Africa the government controls our power (Eskom), phones (Telkom) etc.
so no power, no phone, lucky we have cellphones.
Our "power outages" problem started when Officials started stealing the funds and
passing on high profile contracts to the guy who puts more money into these
officials's pockets, to the extend there are no funds for maintenance and
upgrades. To cut costs they started with power outages (load shedding).
We sometimes sit between 6 and 14 hours a day without power, often twice a week.
Many homeowners like myself had to invest in a generator for backup.
I have a Honda 7KW Petrol generator with 30 liter tank, I can run my whole house
excluding Geyser, stove, oven, kettle and microwave, I purchased a smaller watt
microwave that works fine with the generator.
I have on my patio a 3plate gas burner and gas BBQ I built 2 years ago
so we're ok, just the noise of the generator (which is close to the house) makes it
unpleasant   

[Art Blade]

apart from being sad about that situation you're in, it's anger I feel regarding the corruption that caused your situation. Bloody hell, power outages as a means of coping with costs?! And causing costs for you on top of being cut off because you need to buy a generator and fuel to produce your own electricity?!

I'll never forget that story you told us about people ripping copper lines from the ground so they can sell them, and having to fortify your home so you can feel safe at home.. all that combined, I'd say those are conditions that are rather harsh and having to live with them every day.. no country for weak men.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah that's rough. At least our power outages are due to bad weather for the most part, or when some chuckle head runs into a pole and takes down the wires.

[nex]

Since 2008 our power supplier ESKOM received the following "bailouts" from the Government
2008 R60bn, 2015 R83bn, 2018 R60bn 2019 R69bn

[Art Blade]

so... without those payments, you'd have a significantly higher amount of outages I suppose.

It is madness, really.