On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 09:40:52 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 6/1/2015 7:25 AM, Pat wrote:


When we were young, if the middle digit of the first 3 digits was a 0
or a 1, then it was an area code. All area codes had a 0 or 1 as the
middle digit and all central office prefixes had a 2 thru 9 as the
middle digit. Only 2 thru 9 had letters on the standard dial/keypad.
When they started running out of prefixes in big cities, they dropped
the use of letters. Much later, they started running out of area
codes that met the 0 or 1 rule, so they changed to a computerized
system with lists of valid area codes and prefixes. Now, the 0/1 rule
is completely gone.

That's what did it. It was a fairly major revamping of the system to
recognize other than the 1 and 0 in area codes and allow those digits in
exchanges. And you can't make words using the 1 and 0 keys.

Stop and think for a second at just how amazing the technology is. You
can sit at your home or office phone and punch numbers and then talk to
a person thousands of miles away in another country. Amazing.

Yes, it is. Now the big problem is keeping track of what time it is
there.

I remember when we'd talk to my grandmother, with my mother one one
phone and me and my brother on the other phone. So no one would have to
say the same thing twice, at 20 cents a minute for a station-to-station
call. And we were doing well to have a second phone. Now I have a
dozen phones in the closet and not enough rooms to use them in.

Maybe some day we can do it with hand held phones and no wires. Nah,
that'll never happen.

It won't. And if it did, they'd charge 30 cents a minute more in some
countries. That just proves it's impossible.