How Manhattan's Area Code was Influenced by the Rotary Dial

When I grew up in the '70s, all of New York City had the same area code; I could call from Queens to Manhattan, or vice versa, without having to dial "212" first. When "718" was finally assigned to the outerboroughs, there was a sort of bizarre pride that people took in having a "212" area code, which we from the outerboroughs of course thought was silly.

当我在70年代长大的时候，所有的纽约市都有相同的区号;我可以从皇后区打电话到曼哈顿，反之亦然，而不必先拨“212”。当“718”最终被分配给外围区时，人们对拥有“212”区号感到一种奇怪的自豪，我们这些来自外围区的人当然认为这很愚蠢。

Interestingly enough, the number sequence "212" wasn't chosen randomly, but was a direct result of the design of the input device of the time: The rotary dial.

有趣的是，数字序列“212”不是随机选择的，而是当时输入设备设计的直接结果：旋转拨号盘。

Touch-tone phones may have debuted in the early '60s due to

John E. Karlin

, but I grew up in a house that used rotary phones all the way into the '80s. It was only after we got our first touch-tone phone that I realized how slow the dial was—numbers with an 9 or 0 in them seemed to take forever, and maybe one out of ten times you'd screw the dialing up and have to start over. But "212" was always easy to dial.

按键式电话可能是在60年代初由于

约翰·E。卡林

，但我在一个80年代一直使用转盘电话的房子里长大。直到我们有了第一部按键式电话后，我才意识到拨号有多慢--带9或0的号码似乎要花很长时间，也许十次中有一次你会把拨号搞砸，不得不重新开始。但“212”总是很容易拨打。

As you can guess, when the North American Numbering Plan of the 1940s went about assigning area codes, "212" was assigned to New York City because it was a center of business, and businesspeople are by definition busy, and "212" is the fastest possible area code to dial; due to the way the switching equipment worked, the first and third digits could not be a "1," and the second digit had to be a "1" or a "0." So "212," at a total of five clicks on the dial, was the fastest.

你可以猜到，当20世纪40年代的北美号码计划开始分配区号时，“212”被分配给纽约市，因为它是一个商业中心，商人们从定义上讲是忙碌的，“212”是最快的区号;由于交换设备的工作方式，第一和第三个数字不能是“1”，第二个数字必须是“1”或“0”。所以“212”，在拨号盘上总共点击了五次，是最快的。

Of course, after the addition of "718," it was only us in the outerboroughs that enjoyed the speed of "212"—you Manhattanites had to wait for the "7" and "8" to go all the way around the dial. Suckers!

当然，在加上“718”之后，只有我们这些住在外围的人享受到了“212”的速度--你们曼哈顿人必须等着“7”和“8”一路绕着表盘转。