It really doesn’t take much of a look back in history to find some interesting things out about the telephones that we are currently using. Alexander Graham Bell started the entire thing but it is not even necessary for us to go back to that century for the purpose of this article. Just looking back a couple of decades is interesting enough.

Just a few short decades ago, the telephone company was operated manually by a series of operators that sat behind large switch boards. Whenever a call would come in, the operator would pick up the phone and find out where it was being routed to and then they would manually plug-in in order to route the call through. The system worked well for a number of years, but eventually it needed to be upgraded and the telephone company knew that.

This is when the 10 digit telephone number came into existence and it was a huge step forward over the old system of talking to a manual operator. By being able to identify where the call was coming from and where it was going to, using this numerical system, the entire process was able to be automated.

The first three digits of the telephone number were handed out to different areas of the country and they became known as the area code. This is still true, even today. By looking at an area code, you will be able to tell a general area of where the telephone call came from. Although these area codes are being used up rather quickly, there are still plenty of them left and it should work well into the foreseeable future.

After you dial the area code, you will next dial another three digits that will narrow down where your telephone call is going even further. Inside each area code, a combination of some 999 different numbers is available. These are typically assigned to a small area within a city or perhaps a town of medium or smaller size. These three numbers help the computers at the telephone company to route the call even faster.

Most of us are familiar with the pushbutton telephones that are currently being used but just a few short decades ago, the rotary phone was in existence. If you are unfamiliar with the rotary phone, it was a telephone with a large dial on the front which spun in a clockwise direction. You would put your finger in the hole that corresponded with the number that you were dialing and spin it to the right. As it would spin back, a number of clicks would be audible which would let the telephone company know which number you were dialing.

We have moved quite a bit away from the house phone now and many of us are exclusively using cellular telephones in order to place all of our calls. The fax machine is also becoming increasingly popular and as a result, more and more area codes are being used up regularly. Even though it wasn’t all that many years ago that we didn’t carry cell phones around, most of us could not imagine that day ever coming again.

It is difficult to tell what the future is going to hold for us as far as the telephone and technology are concerned. For at least the foreseeable future, however, we will be using the 10 digit number and the area code in order to place our calls.