Telephones - The History Of 911

In this article we're going to discuss the peopletime, announced plans to build the first 911
responsible for what is now our emergency callsystem in Huntington, Indiana. The President of
system known as 911.Alabama Telephone, a man by the name of Bob
Actually, the first system in being to dial in caseGallagher, was annoyed that the independent
of emergency was used in Great Britain in 1937.phone industry had not been informed of this
In Great Britain the citizens there could dial 999 todecision and consulted as to their thoughts so he
either call for the police, medical assistance or thedecided to get the jump on AT&T and built the
fire department in case of fire. This could be donefirst emergency service in Haleyville, Alabama.
from anywhere in the country by anyone owningGallagher got together with his state inside plant
or leasing a standard telephone. No specialmanager, Bob Fitzgerald, who told Gallagher that
equipment was needed. It wasn't until 1958 thathe could go ahead with his plans. Gallagher then
the American Congress first investigated thequickly went to get approval from Continental
possibility of a universal emergency number forTelephone and the commissioner of Alabama
the United States. Finally, in 1967, a legal mandatePublic Service and then put out a press release on
for this action was passed.February 9 to announce that the Alabama phone
The very first 911 call placed in the United Statescompany would be making history.
was on February 16, 1968 in Haleyville, AlabamaFitzgerald went ahead and looked at all 27
made by the Alabama speaker of the houseAlabama exchanges and chose the Haleyville
Rankin Fite. The call was answered bylocation. He then engineered new circuitry and
Congressman Tom Bevill. There was no actualmade the necessary modifications needed for the
emergency. The call was simply done as a test ofexisting equipment. Fitzgerald and his whole team
the system itself.worked around the clock and got the new 911
The difficulty in instituting the system was thatsystem up and running in under a week. The
the three numbers had to be three numbers thatteam was actually doing double duty at the time,
were not in use anywhere in the United States,working their regular day jobs and then traveling
neither as the first three digits of a phoneto Haleyville at night to complete the project.
number, nor as any of the individual states' areaThey did this at off peak hours so as not to
codes. This had to also be true for all phoneinterfere with normal operations. The project was
numbers in Canada as well. On top of that, thecompleted on February 16, 1968 at exactly 2 PM.
numbers had to be easy to use and remember.Eye witness accounts of the event say that
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) along withwhen the work was finally completed the whole
American Telephone And Telegraph (AT&T),work team shouted, in unison, "Bingo!".
which had a monopoly on phone services at the