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One vestige of rotary phones are some of the original area codes in the North American numbering plan. Highly populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles
by basementcat 7y ago
One vestige of rotary phones are some of the original area codes in the North American numbering plan. Highly populated areas like New York City and Los Angeles have area codes 212 and 213– both are "fast" to enter on a rotary dial. More rural area codes have digits with 9's and 0's.
- toast0 7y agoTo add to this, the original area codes had either a 1 or a 0 as the middle digit; in the original assignment codes with 1 were issued to states which needed multiple codes, and 0 to states with single codes. Of course, as codes split, that became impossible to manage, and in the 1990s, new area codes appeared with 2-8 as the middle digit.