cigardave said:I got one... when you look at a ZIP Code map, the numbers generally progress from the east to the west.
When you look at an area code map, there doesn't seem to be a pattern at all... why not?
OK... here's the answer.
Huge metropolitan areas (i.e., dense population centers) were given area codes with the lowest dialing digits possible (1, 2, 3)... examples are Chicago (312), NYC (212) and LA (213)... because with the old analog dialing system, these numbers took the least time to dial... especially by comparison to area codes containing the numbers 8, 9 or 0... and therefore the phone systems in those dense population centers were more time-efficient... a smaller portion of the total system time was spent dialing numbers.
When the tone-based dialing system came in, the time that it took to dial the area code no longer mattered... becuse each one theoretically took the same amount of time.
And there you have it...