Underunderstood

A Conspiracy Theory About Area Codes

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Adrianne tries to deconstruct how a big city got a seemingly low-prestige area code.

If you like the show, support us on Patreon and get access to our bonus show, Overunderstood.

Show notes:

  • 02:41 – LincMad.com
  • 04:00 - Adrianne says here that Idaho got area code 702. This is not correct!! Idaho got 208. We regret the error.
  • 04:43 – The rotary dial demonstrated in an AT&T video from around the time area codes were added
  • 07:41 – 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
  • 06:52 – A table of the original area code assignments
  • 18:13 – Mark J Cuccia on the 50th anniversary of the North American Numbering Plan
  • 18:34 – Mark J Cuccia mentions the Boston “anomaly”
  • 19:03 – Nation-wide Toll Dialing (Bell Laboratories Record, October 1945)
  • 19:19 – Billy worked on a video about the AT&T archive at The Verge
  • 27:07 – 201, 609 And Now, Oh My, 908 (The New York Times, 1991)
  • 32:40 – An example of Telephone Topics, the in-house magazine for New England Telephone
  • 32:45 – It was actually “Tracing the Telephone in Western Massachusetts”
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