North American Area Codes

[DrLeftover]

As part of my day job, I keep track of such things.

Florida had only one area code in 1947; as of 2010, it has seventeen.

The original Area Code Map in 1947:

And from last year

 

[DrLeftover]

And now a short note of explanation.

Just in the case of my immediate family in the last year when both of my daughters were at home.

For many years, we had ONE phone number for the entire household of four people.

As of when both girls moved out, we had... I don't know, let's count together.

There was still the house phone. 1

And I had a backup phone line for 'occasional calls' and backup for dial up when Comcast's internet died 1 + 1

We each had a cell phone. 2 + 4

My wife's car had a phone number 6 + 1

My daughter's car had a phone number 7 + 1

Any more questions about why you need so many new area codes?

ALSO: many traffic signals have phone lines for monitoring the equipment, as do air conditioners and industrial freezers, and so on......

Yeah, that's a lot of phone numbers.

 

[Evil Eye]

Did they anticipate this sort of growth? Seeing as how the numbers range from ~200 to ~900 on the original map which can't have more than ~100 areas on it.