911 -- A Different View
No, it's not 9-1-1. It's 911. 911 was how it was created. And you can't convince me that there are two people out there in the world who actually believe there is an "11" on the telephone. Yes, I've heard the story that somebody once tried to dial nine-eleven and couldn't find the "eleven" so they weren't able to get through to help. Well, that's a bunch of bunk, as far as I'm concerned. I've met some stupid people, and none have been that stupid. Even little five-year-olds know how to dial 911.
Before 911
A lot of readers are young enough that they can't recall when we didn't have 911. I'm old. I was an adult when we still had telephone operators that answered when you picked up the phone. Our home telephone number was 287-M, which meant we had a party line shared with someone whose number was 287-J. We didn't hear their phone ring, and they didn't hear ours; but if we were using the phone and they picked it up, they could hear our conversation.
In those days, if you had an emergency, you just picked up the telephone and the Operator was there. At least through the 1950s, the operator was probably in your town. The operator knew you and your family, and they also knew the town doctor and where he was (it was always a "he" in those days). They knew the police chief and fire chief and could locate any of them in a moment. They knew what bars they hung out at and who their girl friends were. It's funny, but we had Caller ID in those days and we didn't even know it.
It was probably in the 1950s or a little later when dial-tone and dialing came about that phone companies started centralizing their operators. If I dialed "O" I would likely to reach an operator as far as 500 miles away who didn't know me, my police or fire chiefs, or the doctor, and probably had never even heard of my town. So in an emergency I had the choice of dialing "O" and reaching someone who didn't know who I was or where I was; or finding my telephone directory, trying to figure out who was the "right" response agency, and phoning them. Now if I knew that I was in San Francisco or Denver or New York or Miami, it was probably likely that the police department went by the same name: like the San Francisco Police Department. But if I was outside the city, say in the suburbs, it would be difficult to know who to call. And since cities seldom have boundaries that make sense, finding the right agency could be a difficult task.
What was even harder was finding a fire department or ambulance company. Big city fire departments were usually identified with the city. But then we had Fire District Number 23, or Consolidated Fire, or Central Fire; and Central Ambulance, Bill's Ambulance, Mary's Ambulance. And if you called the wrong place, they'd would often (very often?) tell you that you reached the wrong place and hang up.
But I truly believe that it was the proliferation of small suburban communities that pushed agencies to lobby for a standard, nationwide emergency number. But more on that later.
First Efforts
One of the earliest references to the potential use of an emergency number in the U.S. was carried in Parade Magazine, possibly in 1966 or 1967. I don't have a copy of that article, nor have I asked Parade for a copy. The article spotlighted a telephone call-diverter concept developed by two renegade former AT&T brothers by the name of Morcom (or Marcom). In their plan, the emergency number was tied to the area code. To call police emergency in the San Francisco area, you would call 415-1. To call fire, 415-2; EMS would be 415-3. If you were in the 707 area code, police would be 707-1, etc.
A friend of mine wrote to me that she recalled that the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) called for a single emergency number for fire in 1957, but even IAFC is unable to confirm that rumor. They have a recent clipping of a fire chief in Opelika who claims it was his idea in 1967 to the IAFC that resulted in 911 happening. The IAFC has no record of this actually taking place.
The Johnson Era
President Lyndon Johnson's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice issued its report in 1967 -- and I believe this was after the Parade Magazine article. The report, "The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society" included this: "The Commission recommends: Wherever practical, a single police [emphasis added] telephone number should be established, at least within a metropolitan area and eventually over the entire United States, comparable to the telephone company's long-distance information number." Nothing was mentioned about fire or medical calls, or a number that would connect to them.
In 1968, then-AT&T vice president H.L. Kertz wrote (as noted in Law Enforcement Science and Technology II, published by IIT Research Institute, 1968) that Senator Gruening of Alaska, Representative Roush of Indiana, and other members of the U.S. Congress introduced resolutions in Congress recommending a universal emergency telephone number. All efforts to verify that such a resolutions exists or existed have been to no avail.
AT&T's Kertz chronicles subsequent events, saying, "The President's Commission on Civil Disorders communicated with the Chairman of the FCC on this subject in October, 1967 and the matter was referred to the Defense Commissioner of the FCC who got in touch with the top officials at AT&T. The FCC's Defense Commissioner, as a representative of the FCC, strongly urged AT&T to make every effort to find a means of establishing a universal emergency number that could be put into effect as quickly as possible and then take steps to see that this was done."
On January 12, 1968, AT&T announced their designation of 911 as a universal emergency number; and this was an action that affected only the Bell companies, and not any of the independent telephone companies.
The U.S. Independent Telephone Association was certainly not pleased that AT&T had plunged ahead with this plan that would affect them too. The Association circulated a letter stating, "In most of our communities there is no such organization as a single public safety agency. It may therefore be a problem to form such an agency and provide the funds necessary for the rental of switchboards and other necessary telephone equipment. There may be differences of opinion as to who should operate such an agency because of jurisdictional conflicts between state police, sheriffs and local police. In addition there will be the responsibility of handling fire calls and ambulance calls, perhaps from volunteer organizations which are not tied in with the police." How prophetic their words would be.
In a report dated February 27, 1968, FCC Commissioner Lee Loevinger wrote, "It appears ... that there are these objections to the plan: (A) The Bell System [meaning AT&T] did not consult with the various police organizations, independent [telephone] companies, and others about this specific proposal prior to its announcement."
AT&T VP Kertz continues that subsequent to this announcement, 911 was widely supported by the FCC, endorsed in a House Resolution, and commented favorably upon by President Johnson in his February 2, 1968 congressional "Message on Crime." (I'll quote from that later.)
Whose Jurisdiction?
Since the concept of 911 (and there was never any reference to "9-1-1") involved intra-state communications (intra-state means inside of a state, as opposed to inter-state which means across state lines), 911 was in the purview of the state public utility commissions and neither the FCC nor the Congress had any jurisdiction over 911 or its operation. Congress could have assumed responsibility for it, and could have directed the FCC to perform some function or assume some responsibility, but it did not. Any stated support by the FCC, by members of Congress, or by the President of the United States, was meaningless since they had no binding effect on the states and their public utility commissions or legislative bodies. Now it is only a matter of speculation that Congress did not act in this matter, for to have done so may have placed Congress in the position of having to fund the 911 system. By leaving it to the states to accept or decline, the states would have to fund the system.
Ulterior Motives?
During the 1960s when all this was being considered, AT&T (as were other telephone companies) was spending very large sums of money to maintain operators so that the public could dial "O" and get help when needed. It is my opinion that AT&T wanted to phase out that emergency service, or at least curtail, or control it. The concept of 911 was, in my mind, developed or designed to shift the burden of emergency phone answering from "O" to public safety agencies. In this way, AT&T not only was able to recover costs by reducing operator expenses, but was later able to sell massive amounts of equipment and long-term maintenance agreements to public safety agencies. Was this their motive? Perhaps we will never know for sure.
First Installation
You may be aware of the fact that the first "system" utilizing the 911 number was in Haleyville, Alabama, a small town in Winston County in the northwest corner of the state near the junction of the states of Mississippi and Tennessee. This is interesting since Haleyville was then served by Alabama Telephone, a Contel company that was later bought by GTE. It took them only five weeks to bring their new 911 system on-line, and the technicians didn't think it was any big deal.
The Selection of 911
The questions persist: How was "911" selected as a number, and why did AT&T choose it? In the pre-divestiture days, phone numbers and area codes were controlled by AT&T. AT&T documents claim that 911 was the easy-to-remember number specified by the President's Commission on Crime. AT&T had already been using 411 and 611. By agreement (through their North American number management program), area codes and 3-digit numbers needed a "1" or "0" as the middle digit. Until recently (when such numbers became saturated), all area codes had a "1" or "0" as the middle digit. This "rule" prevented the use of 999 as an emergency number; 999 was and is used for emergencies in England. A number of "N11" combinations were evidently considered by AT&T, and "they" felt that 911 was the best choice. Other possibilities included 111, 211, 311 (now being considered as a nationwide non-emergency public safety number), 511, 711, or 811. The choice of 911 may have been by the flip of a coin, or there may have been some specific reason for its selection. Nothing in the AT&T history available to us mentions how 911 was arrived at, other than as noted above.
Rumors and Facts
Much of the research in this article came about as a result of a curious reference in a document published by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. The document stated, "In 1968, U.S. President Richard Nixon, in conjunction with an agreement with AT&T, signed an executive order providing for a single nationwide public emergency number, 9-1-1... The 9-1-1 number is reserved for this purpose and cannot be assigned for any other use."
First of all, Richard Nixon was not president in 1968. He was elected in 1968 and took office in 1969. Lyndon Johnson was president throughout 1968. We have researched the presidential libraries of both Johnson and Nixon (just in case) and both report that there was no such executive order. If President Johnson (who was president in 1968) had made an agreement with AT&T, it was verbal, not in writing. It is not known who or how 911 might have been reserved (and cannot be assigned for any other use) because there was no act by the Congress or the FCC to establish this. A commercial vendor (AT&T), without consulting the larger base of telephone companies, established 911 merely by saying it was so.
President Johnson did send a message to Congress on February 7, 1968 (noted that this was a week prior to AT&T's announcement creating 911) in which he said, "To implement a four-point program to improve law enforcement communications: [notice that he said law enforcement] -- I am instructing the Attorney General to cooperate with the Federal Communications Commission, local law enforcement authorities, and the telephone companies to develop methods to make the ordinary telephone more effective for summoning police aid [not fire or medical too] in times of emergency. Such a step, recommended by the Crime Commission, was recently endorsed by the largest telephone company in the Nation." And as I noted above, the FCC appears to have had no jurisdiction over the intrastate telephone services provided by an emergency number; and everything mentioned dealt with police, not fire or medical.
The Attorney General was ordered to cooperate. In a memo to the White House dated April 15, 1968 (three months after AT&T's announcement) from Fred M. Vinson, Jr., Assistant Attorney General, stated, "With respect to the emergency telephone number I have met with [FCC] Commissioner Lee Loevinger and with representatives from AT&T and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. AT&T has made the number "911" available for emergency use, and it is expected that the independent telephone companies will follow suit. To date New York and Minneapolis have stated that they will adopt that number as an emergency number and two or three small towns have already done so... There are problems involved in using one number for all emergency calls, including police, fire, ambulance, poisoning, etc., and it is not yet settled as to whether the number will be used only for police or for all emergencies. Recently the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia held a conference to consider these problems. It was attended by representatives from interested agencies, municipalities and industry. The problems were discussed but final solutions have not yet been reached."
Perhaps the most telling reference is found in the report dated February 27, 1968, by FCC Commissioner Lee Loevinger in which he stated, "The 911 emergency calling system is not mandatory. It has been offered by the Bell System to all communities served by the Bell System [emphasis added] at the request of the FCC and the United States Government."
My Opinion
Obviously there is much more to this story, and there are many more documents that were not referenced here. Although more than 25 years have passed, new information continues to surface. As you read this, please be assured that I totally support 911, and believe that it has been good for our country; it has saved many lives. I just believe that history should note that the process was flawed, and that AT&T was not altruistic in rushing to the aid of the American public. In spite of that, if the method was wrong, the result has been to the benefit of our country, and AT&T must be commended for stepping forward and acting when others were reluctant to do so. That sounds like a left-handed compliment, and was meant to be.
updated 8-3-2001 copyright 1996, 911 Dispatch Services, Inc.
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