Summary
Adrianne tries to deconstruct how a big city got a seemingly low-prestige area code.
Show notes
- LincMad.com
- Adrianne says here that Idaho got area code 702. This is not correct!! Idaho got 208. We regret the error.
- The rotary dial demonstrated in an AT&T video from around the time area codes were added
- AT&T, or Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph, was a monopoly provider of telephone service until it was broken up in 1983 as part of an antitrust settlement with the U.S. government. That’s really all you need to know, although a good book about this is The Master Switch
- A table of the original area code assignments
- Mark J Cuccia on the 50th anniversary of the North American Numbering Plan
- Mark J Cuccia mentions the Boston “anomaly”
- [[Bell Laboratories Record, October 1945)](https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Bell-Laboratories-Record/40s/Bell-Laboratories-Record-1945-10.pdf|Nation-wide Toll Dialing (Bell Laboratories Record, October 1945)]]
- Billy worked on a video about the AT&T archive at The Verge
- [[The New York Times, 1991)](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/02/nyregion/201-609-and-now-oh-my-908.html|201, 609 And Now, Oh My, 908 (The New York Times, 1991)]]
- An example of Telephone Topics, the in-house magazine for New England Telephone
- It was actually “Tracing the Telephone in Western Massachusetts”