Boston Gets the Area Code It Wants
In the late 1940s, AT&T assigned my father, Leland K. Palmer, a district manager in its traffic department, to oversee the development of the Bell System’s direct distance dialing (area) codes. The area codes greatly facilitated the placing of long-distance calls. Beforehand, a customer had to give a long-distance number to a switchboard operator, who would then make the connection. Advances in telephone technology made the use of area codes possible. In assigning specific numbers to states and regions, my father negotiated with both Bell System managers and state politicians around the country. One interesting problem involved the City of Boston.
At that time, a powerful Democratic machine that influenced every aspect of life in the city governed Boston. Not surprisingly, its leaders took an interest in the code Boston would be assigned under the new numbering system. Telephones in the 1940s generally had a rotary dial. A premise governing the designation of three-digit area codes-- to a state, or to regions within a state-- was that densely populated areas where the incoming call volume was heavy should have mostly low numbers (meaning ones high up on the rotary dial, requiring less time to execute) while rural areas—ones that received fewer calls—should be assigned mostly higher numbers (farther down on the dial). The aim was to save time for the largest number of customers. Thus, New York City earned a 2-1-2 designation, while rural Maine received a 2-0-7 code. Because apportionment principal seemed rational, it generated relatively little contention in most states and cities as the codes were assigned.
Not so in Boston. There the Democratic machine thought the prospective apportionment would diminish their city. If the national pattern were followed, Boston residents would be forced to dial high numbers when placing calls to the western (and generally Republican) parts of Massachusetts. Meanwhile, callers to Boston from those western regions would enjoy the benefit of using lower numbers. City politicians moved to avert that disaster. In 1948
Democrats had won control of the state legislature for the first time in history, providing the city machine with even greater clout. Led by Mayor John Hynes, protests were made to New England Telephone and through it to AT&T. After negotiations, Boston gained an exception to the national plan, earning a 6-1-7 area code (high for a large city), and western Massachusetts received a lower 4-1-3. Massachusetts has added several more area codes in the decades since 1950 but the two original ones remain, examples that politics sometimes trumps technology.
Kenneth T. Palmer
Kittery Point, ME