Ken Gargett Posted February 16, 2018 Share Posted February 16, 2018 “9-1-1” Has Meant “Help, Please” For 49 Years The first 911 call ever placed came from the small town of Haleyville, Alabama image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/LtSpzF4uXemhmblbFQIvbEnU4KA=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/59/c2/59c2c4f1-692c-4cf4-a280-fc749838939e/haleyville-featured-image.jpg The phone that made the first 9-1-1 call in the U.S. is still in Haleyville, Alabama, now on display in the town’s City Hall. (Courtesy Bernard Troncale) By Kat Eschner smithsonian.com February 16, 2017 520219 On this day in 1968, a phone rang in the police station of Haleyville, Alabama. But unlike all the days before, the caller—Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite, who was not in an emergency situation—didn’t dial the local police number. He dialed 911, a three-digit number that would go down in local and national history. The idea for a universal emergency phone number didn’t start in Haleyville, a town of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants that was dry until 2010. It started with a 1957 recommendation from the National Association of Fire Chiefs, writes Carla Davis for the Alabama News Center. Their recommendation was prompted by a serious problem, she writes: before 911, anyone who needed emergency help had to figure out if they needed the fire department, the police, or medical help, and then call the appropriate local number. Not easy to do when someone is bleeding, a baby is being born, or the building’s on fire. It took more than a decade before the fire chiefs’ recommendation was put into effect, Davis writes. Haleyville came into the picture when the president of the Alabama Telephone Co., an independent telephone company, fought to have his company launch the new system. The call was picked up at the police station on a special red phone, wrote Hoyt Harwell for the Associated Press on 911’s 25th anniversary in 1993. At the receiving end of the call was Congressman Tom Bevill, Alabama’s longest-serving congressman—who was still in office when Harwell interviewed him 25 years after that first call. “Immediately afterward, we had coffee and donuts,” Bevill recalled. But the early days of 911 weren’t all coffee and donuts, Harwell wrote: A couple of years after the system was installed, newly hired Haleyville police dispatcher Ronnie Wilson received a frantic 911 call. “A woman said, ‘My water just broke,’ and I told her I’d get her a plumber right away,’” Wilson recalled. “Then she said I didn’t understand, and I realized she was about to have a baby, and ordered an ambulance for her.” Haleyville still celebrates the event that put it on the map with an annual 911 Festival, Davis writes. But out of the 10 possible numbers on a telephone, why were the digits “9-1-1” chosen? That question has an answer that dates back to the 1960s as well. Rotary phones were still common in the 1960s, writes Sarah Stone for Today I Found Out, and the digits of the emergency number were both easy to remember and quick to dial, as they used the number at the end of a rotary phone’s rotation and the number that was fastest to dial. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Habana Mike Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 And now you know the rest of the story.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordAnubis Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 Why not 111 then?Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grizzlee Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 6 hours ago, LordAnubis said: Why not 111 then? You beat me to it. If speed and ease were important why not 111. I'm old enough to remember how long it took to dial a 9 - click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PigFish Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 9-1-1=7 9+1+1=11 7/11... means getting help before you die is a crapshoot! -Piggy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OB1 Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 111 is too easy for babies and kids to dial by accident. 911 requires knowing the sequence. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foursite12 Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 An initial 1 in the dial sequence means something else, like you are dialing out of area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Bsonwine Posted February 17, 2018 Popular Post Share Posted February 17, 2018 Because they’re awesome. Oops wrong thread... 3 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PigFish Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 ... dial, what a novel concept! People are showing their age!!! -Piggy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metro_habanos Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 My mother worked as an operator when she started with the company and you would pick-up the receiver and tell her the number and she would pull different cords and plug you in. Kind of like what you see in the old movies or show's like Andy Griffith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marquardt65 Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 1 hour ago, smfdff said: My mother worked as an operator when she started with the company and you would pick-up the receiver and tell her the number and she would pull different cords and plug you in. Kind of like what you see in the old movies or show's like Andy Griffith. My grandmother did something like that during WWII. Grandfather was a british royal airforce engineer and grandmother was a "communications connector". Thought it was a cool piece of family history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metro_habanos Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 12 hours ago, marquardt65 said: My grandmother did something like that during WWII. Grandfather was a british royal airforce engineer and grandmother was a "communications connector". Thought it was a cool piece of family history. Yep. Cool man. She would also talk about when you wanted to call someone the phone number actually started with a name and then numbers. If my memory serves me it was something like, Hello operator, please connect me to groveland 4372. Prior to that it was, hello operator, please connect me to Cunningham on the Richman line. Oh, I just remembered they were call switchboard operators when they would plug you in to a call. How times have changed. Now it's, Siri call Domino's pizza. lol...... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marquardt65 Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 haha its ridiculous how far we have come with tech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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