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Why is the emergency number 999?

The official answer is that it was because the digit "9" is the easiest to locate in the dark on a rotary-dial telephone, being next-but-one to the little metal finger-stop.

theguardian.com - Why is the number for the emergency services 999 when this would take ...

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NOOKS AND CRANNIES

Why is the number for the emergency services 999 when this would take the longest to dial on old-fashioned telephones? Wendy Bedggood, Lymington Uk It is also the one which is (was) least likely to be dialed by wires brushing each other accidently during windy conditions. Something that the european number (112) is particularly susceptible to. Benjy Arnold, London UK The official answer is that it was because the digit "9" is the easiest to locate in the dark on a rotary-dial telephone, being next-but-one to the little metal finger-stop. (Arguably, 1 and 0 would be easier to find, but you can't have a telephone number of "000" because 0 at the start indicates an STD call, and the three pulses "111" would be too similar to a slowly-dialled "3"). I suspect that the real reason was that the number couldn't be the first three digits of any number which had been allocated to a normal customer before the start of the service. Since numbers were allocated in approximately an ascending sequence, 999 was least likely to clash with an existing number. Allan Dean, Wimbledon UK If memory serves (and someone else's will undoubtedly serve them better), it was something to do with the fact that the emergency number had to be free of call charges. For technical reasons I once knew, this was either easier or more convenient to the General Post Office (as it was in those days) if the number 9 was used - perhaps someone with a better memory than me can explain this. I do recall, however, that a side effect of this was that it was possible to make free calls - an early form of "Phone Phreaking." The technique was to turn the phone dial to 9, then let it return by the number of clicks corresponding to the number one wanted to dial - for instance, to dial a 3, you would dial 9 then let the dial rotate back to 6. Once the number 6 was reached, you would turn the dial back to 9 again and let it return by the number of clicks corresponding to the next digit, and so on, only letting the dial return to it's rest position after the last digit. Understandably, this didn't seem to worry the GPO too much, as the process was so laborious that even most people who knew the technique preferred to simply insert a coin. If you have an old dial phone, this technique may even still work. It's certainly worth a try... Peter Wardley-Repen, Sheffield UK The idea of a single number for emergency calls dates back to 1937. The initial plan was to use the number 111, but it was feared that subscribers might dial this number "by accident" by repeatedly tapping on the telephone cradle, which mimics the pulses transmitted down the line by a rotary dial. Triple 0 was also impossible, zero being the number dialled for the general operator at that time. Other triple figures were ruled out because they had already been allocated to subscriber numbers. 999 was still available, however, and the figure 9 was considered reasonably easy to find on a telephone dial in a smoke-filled room! Mark Prosser , Berne Switzerland Before the introduction of the 999 service all calls were routed to a manual board operator. The operator could not differentiate whether an incoming call was an emergency until the call was answered. After several fatalities it was decided to separate emergency calls from normal operator calls. There are several reasons for using 999. Firstly the automatic exchanges in the 6 major cities, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool could only route calls comprising 3 or 7 codes. The only exception to this were calls to the operator - see below. The exchanges would translate the codes to allow routing of the calls. The code 999 was used to allow free calls to the emergency services from coinboxes (payphones). The dials of coinboxes were already modified to allow free calls to the operator using the digit '0'. The next easiest digit to modify on the dial was the 9 - next to 0. Finally as the code was translated for routing the call, the digits used were basically unimportant. The call set up time between 111 and 999 is insignificant. Alan Darlington, Great Sutton In Canada we have combimed the two possibilities. The emergency number is 911. Fred Vickers, St. Catharines, Ontario Canada

theguardian.com - Why is the number for the emergency services 999 when this would take ...

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