A Conspiracy Theory About Area Codes

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”