Why "911"?

[Lethal.Ambition]

I was just thinking....

why 911?
why couldn't it be another number? Does 911 mean anything special?

[Deputy]

It saves valuable time in an emergency. According to nationwide statistics, it can take up to 2 1/2 minutes to find your telephone directory (phone book) and another minute to locate the correct number. In an emergency, 3 minutes is a really long @ss time---time that can be saved by remembering to call 911.

[loomex]

I was just thinking....

why 911?
why couldn't it be another number? Does 911 mean anything special?

I think he is asking why the numbers "911". Why not 123, or 159

[swanny338]

u know... i have no idea,

this explains it

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question664.htm

[Polynomial]

interesting, in Australia, we have a simple 000 . . .

[russ]

When i used to live in Russia, we had different numbers for different emergencies:
01-Fire Department
02-Police
03-Ambulance

[BFMF]

What's the difference between pressing 911 and 0 for an operator here in the US?

[pete]

What's the difference between pressing 911 and 0 for an operator here in the US?

I'm not up on the American phone system but I imagine you get a different operator.

If you dial 000 here, you get the 'emergency operator' who asks "Police, Fire or Ambulance".

So I'd say, as a guess, that when you dial 911, you get an emergency operator. When you dial 0, you get a 'general operator' who can connect calls, solve problems etc.

[Hagar]

In the UK it's always been 999. Most likely since the telephone was invented. They probably changed it recently like they changed everything else. No wonder old fogies like me are permanently confused.

[Paz]

 I always figured it was '911' because the numbers are seperated by the rest of the keypad on all phones, therefore making it rather difficult to dial '911' by mistake.

[pete]

[quote]

[Hagar]

That is exactly what I think it is.... It is very easy to dial 000 or 999 in error - especially with portable & cellular phones in the pocket ... I heard on some TV program that the UK emergency services get litterally 1000's of calls made this way every day - - that's not including hoax calls.

I think this was the original idea with 999. On the old dial phones it would be much more difficult to dial 999 by accident than with any other repeated number. The same would apply if a small child was playing with the phone. The problem arose when dials were replaced with push buttons.

[Delta_]

999 in uk

[ATI_7500]

we have the following emergency numbers in germany:

110 - police
112 - fire department
19222 (can vary from region to region) - ambulance

[Delta_]

we have local numbers these are for non emergencies and enquiries.