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The nationwide roll-out of the 911 system was a difficult endeavor
- mercurysmessage 9y agoI'd like to see one on the roll-out of Japans Earthquake Early Warning System.
- tjohns 9y agoTotally agree. I'd really love to see Japan's ETWS system rolled out on the US west coast. I was in Japan earlier this year, and happened to be watching TV when the earthquake warning system cut in. It gave about 5-10 seconds of advance warning before an earthquake hit. Enough time to move out of the way of anything heavy. It's quite impressive. If anyone's curious, this is what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxxZkpV0HI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxxZkpV0HI (The earthquake early warning cuts in at 0:15, and a tsunami warning automatically cuts in at 2:34... though most of the tsunami warning is cut off at the end. This is what the full earthquake+tsunami warning sequence looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMNu8Y1jIlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMNu8Y1jIlU)
- Theodores 9y agoThanks for posting - I will be re-using those video clips at an appropriate time to warn of workplace upheavals etc.
- mercurysmessage 9y agoYes I experienced it a number of times while I've been in Japan as well, it is impressive and certainly helpful. It would be a great system to have in any area that experiences a lot of earthquakes, or other, short notice emergencies.
- nvusuvu 9y agoArticle misses that little ol' Haleyville, Alabama was the first city to roll-out 911.
- cperciva 9y agoIt was the first city to use those particular numbers, but the service existed as 999 elsewhere before it was introduced to the USA.
- macintux 9y ago999 on a rotary dial phone? Dear heavens.
- throwaway91111 9y agoHard to dial accidentally, but no much thought involved.
- walshemj 9y agoAll the 9's was used as you could get a high winds which would cause a 1 to be generated accidently (this was telegraph poles)
- gpvos 9y agoThat was, and still is, in the UK. Efficiency is apparently not their strong point.
- thspimpolds 9y agowhile I want to read this article, that font makes it impossible.
- kalleboo 9y agoFirefox reading mode seems to work just fine on this page
- binarycrusader 9y agoI think you're being a bit overdramatic, or there's a difference between your configuration and mine (FireFox Desktop). I find it quite readable, pleasantly so even.
- sp332 9y agoThe color of the body text is (102,102,102). That cuts your contrast just about in half.
- kuschku 9y agoWhich is awesome if you have a monitor with 1000 nits or more, as (0,0,0) to (255,255,255) has a blinding contrast on them. The basic issue is that CSS colors are defined in terms of relative brightness of the monitor, and not within of a proper colorspace. Most browsers assume sRGB, but many users don’t even have that. In sRGB, a contrast of (102,102,102) to (255,255,255) is a very pleasant, and perfectly readable contrast. But many users are on shitty 6-bit color depth 100 nits or less displays.
- kalleboo 9y agoAn example of the drawbacks of decentralization - meanwhile in Sweden, 98% of phones were already covered by the "90 000" emergency number by 1965.
- bostonpete 9y agoWow, that must've taken forever to dial on a rotary phone.
- kalleboo 9y agoOn Swedish rotary phones the 0 was on the other side (one pulse)
- freestockoption 9y ago0 indexed! :)
- waqf 9y agoWhat?! What happened when you made an international call, did you have to subtract 1 from all the digits?
- gpvos 9y agoIn 1965 there wasn't much international direct dialling yet; mainly to neighbouring countries. The rest was done via an operator. International exchanges tended to buffer the entire called phone number anyway, even back in electromechanical times, which meant they could also translate the pulses if that would have been necessary.
- trendia 9y agoStill better than 0118 999 881 999 119 7253 https://youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=ab8GtuPdrUQ
- bdamm 9y ago
- pcunite 9y agoTLDR; Because everyone uses cell phones, 911 does not work the way people think it does. Let's use the celebrity of William Shatner to embolden the public to make a request of the government to use better technology to know where you are at all times ... so you'll be safe.
- bungie4 9y agoMy job is upgrading and maintaining 911 and other life safety systems. The article is correct, advancing technologies are not reflected by additional capabilities by PSAPs, DISA's or ILEC's (The ppl that foward your call to a responder). It was only recently that IP based 911 sending of ANI/ALI (Telephone/Location data) data has been implemented on a large scale. In Canada, it ran on an old packet switched network for ages! Their are different flavors of 911. E911 (Enhanced), V911 for VoIP phones, and recently the addition of Wifi based calling among others. The original 911 systems was designed when phones were static, they didn't move. Nowadays, with cell, voip and now, wifi devices, theirs no telling where the call (device) originates from. Yes, most send long/lat data, but that is based on triangulation of cell towers and not accurate enough. To further complicate things, long/lat doesn't take into account altitude. In a urban setting, the responders maybe at ground level wondering just which building and floor originated the call (yes, their systems to deal with this but not widely implemented, and, failing that, if the caller is unable to speak, you have a larger issue). Most responders don't even have the ability to map a long/lat. So at this point, the accuracy is moot. All that being said. The E911 system works well. Cell/VoIP/Wifi, not so much. The call will generate a response, but it's hardly efficient.
- eropple 9y ago> Most responders don't even have the ability to map a long/lat. So at this point, the accuracy is moot. This is genuinely surprising to me. The operators having trouble makes sense, because phones are something of a rolling disaster, but responders aren't using GPSes that can do this?
- bungie4 9y agoI'm sorry, I should clarify. Their are many layers of 'responders', their maybe just one, your call was routed to the local police. It may have been routed to call center in that area, who in turn broker the call, etc. Imagine a situation where your traveling down an interstate out in the boonies. Theirs a wreck. You call 911 from your cell. The responder will receive an approximation of your location, likely the closet cell tower. From that, and before being able to send a responder, they must determine WHO to call based on your location. Just because your closer to town B than town A doesn't mean town B gets the call. Town B may forward your call to town A. Then, you have to determine where to dispatch too. It's doubtful you know the closest mile marker. Only your direction of travel, and the last area that you can remember. It's strictly a best effort.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- justizin 9y agoI once worked at a bourgeoning hosting provider who had one of the higher floors in a building that was condemned, but couldn't be torn down because it was home to a phone switching room that had been a part of the original 911, and the designers of technology then simply did not even imagine their systems being EOLed, so it turns out, no living or dead being knows how. I'm curious to know if that's still standing. The freight elevator shaft had a shattered wooden freight elevator carriage at the bottom of it. We took the stairs.
- Steeeve 9y agoThose kind of buildings are all around the country and serve various purposes - some of which specifically manage 911 calls. I can't imagine ever decommissioning one. Sometimes even gaining access takes something just shy of an act of god. While AT&T has re-consolidated in a major way, there are still a lot of external concerns to deal with. Somebody would have to be very motivated to push through turning an interconnection point like that off. The politics involved in doing so would be extraordinary - even if there was common agreement from the start that it was time to let it go. I don't even know that you really could initiate a project like that from within a Telco. It is a bit surprising that it was common knowledge that part of 911 ran out of there. While it's not "secret" information, the purpose and location of most similar properties are typically not openly advertised. Most people don't even know where their local CO actually is.
- Animats 9y agoThe original 911 system was rolled out when many phone switches were electromechanical. Step-by-step and crossbar offices didn't log calls, didn't pass line identification data with the call, and couldn't route based on the source of the call. But they had hard-wired relay logic in the originating registers (the units that receive dial digits) to recognize area codes (second digit 1 or 0 back then) and service numbers (second and third digits 1). Those were forwarded to a toll office, along with automatic line identification info. So 911 was forwarded to a toll office, like a long distance call. "999" was considered as the emergency number; the UK used that. But US switches didn't have a special case for 999, so that was hard to retrofit. Hence 911. Toll offices, which handled long distance calls, were computerized by then. They could be upgraded to deal with 911 routing. This requires a database to map phone numbers to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point. The idea of having a computer with a disk drive in the call chain was radical at the time, but it was made to work. The original computers for this were Western Electric 3B machines, set up as duplex pairs. The toll office 911 system became a problem with the breakup of AT&T. AT&T retained most of the toll switches, while the local exchange carriers got the local offices. (Now, of course, with weak antitrust enforcement, they've all merged back together again.)
- johansch 9y agoThat font is so horrible. :/
- rootsudo 9y agoIf you want to see an emerging country try it nowadays, look at the Philippines. They basically gave up. Though the telecoms are a duopoly. Only working 911 system is in Davao. Everywhere else you have independent short codes like 117 which may not be answered. Ironic for most of the BPO is outsourced call center agents. Then the second issue are jokes, http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/08/01/16/dial-8888-911-govt-opens-complaints-emergency-hotlines http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/08/01/16/dial-8888-911-govt-ope... "Hotline 911 received 2,475 recorded calls, between 12 a.m. to 7 a.m. Monday. Out of the total, only 75 calls were legitimate while the 1,119 were dropped and 1,356 were prank calls." In other news, I've not yet needed it.
- spectre 9y agoThere's some interesting technical history behind some of the emergency number choices: 999 in the UK (from 1937) was chosen because public payphone could be easily modified to make it a free call. 111 in New Zealand (from 1958) was chosen because the system was implemented using British Post Office equipment that already supported 999. But New Zealand phones pulsed in reverse so 111 on a New Zealand phone produced the same pulse as 999 on a British phone. 000 in Australia (from 1961) was chosen because 0 was already used for trunk access. On an automated rural exchange, 0 would connect you to a main centre. In remote communities it was 00. This meant that dialing 000 through an existing remote exchange would at least connect you to an operator in a main centre.