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Telephones - The History Of 911

In this article we're going to discuss theannounced plans to build the first 911 system
people responsible for what is now ourin Huntington, Indiana. The President of
emergency  call  system  known  as  911.Alabama Telephone, a man by the name of Bob
Gallagher, was annoyed that the independent
Actually, the first system in being to dialphone industry had not been informed of this
in case of emergency was used in Greatdecision and consulted as to their thoughts
Britain in 1937. In Great Britain theso he decided to get the jump on AT&T and
citizens there could dial 999 to either callbuilt the first emergency service in
for the police, medical assistance or theHaleyville,  Alabama.
fire department in case of fire. This could
be done from anywhere in the country byGallagher got together with his state inside
anyone owning or leasing a standardplant manager, Bob Fitzgerald, who told
telephone. No special equipment was needed.Gallagher that he could go ahead with his
It wasn't until 1958 that the Americanplans. Gallagher then quickly went to get
Congress first investigated the possibilityapproval from Continental Telephone and the
of a universal emergency number for thecommissioner of Alabama Public Service and
United States. Finally, in 1967, a legalthen put out a press release on February 9 to
mandate  for  this  action  was  passed.announce that the Alabama phone company would
be  making  history.
The very first 911 call placed in the United
States was on February 16, 1968 inFitzgerald went ahead and looked at all 27
Haleyville, Alabama made by the AlabamaAlabama exchanges and chose the Haleyville
speaker of the house Rankin Fite. The calllocation. He then engineered new circuitry
was answered by Congressman Tom Bevill.and made the necessary modifications needed
There was no actual emergency. The call wasfor the existing equipment. Fitzgerald and
simply  done  as a test of the system itself.his whole team worked around the clock and
got the new 911 system up and running in
The difficulty in instituting the system wasunder a week. The team was actually doing
that the three numbers had to be threedouble duty at the time, working their
numbers that were not in use anywhere in theregular day jobs and then traveling to
United States, neither as the first threeHaleyville at night to complete the project.
digits of a phone number, nor as any of theThey did this at off peak hours so as not to
individual states' area codes. This had tointerfere with normal operations. The
also be true for all phone numbers in Canadaproject was completed on February 16, 1968 at
as well. On top of that, the numbers had toexactly  2  PM.
be easy to use and remember. The Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) along with AmericanEye witness accounts of the event say that
Telephone And Telegraph (AT&T), which had awhen the work was finally completed the whole
monopoly on phone services at the time,work team shouted, in unison, "Bingo!".



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