Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sun, 14 Apr 91 14:20:38 +22323328 From: irvin@northstar105.dartmouth.edu Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: It is Now Official: 416 to be Split Into 905 Reply-To: irvin@northstar.dartmouth.edu Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 293, Message 4 of 11 Lines: 27 In TELECOM Digest V11 #288, Moderator writes: > Big cities got 'short pull' area codes and small towns got > 'long pull' area codes. Would you explain the terms 'short pull' and 'long pull'. Tim Irvin [Moderator's Note: Back in the days when rotary, or pulse dialing was very prevalent, the numbers on the dial which required a longer time to pull forward and spin back to their resting place, i.e. 7,8,9,0 were fashionable in some quarters, but not in others. 1,2,3,4,5,6 took a shorter period of time to pull and release. Many or perhaps most business places, and certainly the more fashionable residence hotels wanted xx-hundred and x-thousand leading numbers for their switchboards. You'd have thought they'd want 2111, 3111, 2121 and other 'faster to dial' numbers, but they didn't. Big cities were most likely to receive lots of calls, therefore the area codes were made from 'short' numbers; i.e. New York = 212, El Lay = 213, Chicago = 312. East Podunk, Kalamazoo, and Timbuck, too got the 7xx and 8xx codes. But oddly, Our Nation's (drug and murder) Capital got 202, partly short and partly long. PAT]