COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:Cellphones to blame for 657

Do you like change? Most people don’t. If that applies to you and if your phone number starts with three numbers that look like this, more or less — 714 — you’re not going to like this.

In 2008, which is another way of saying next year, the 714 calling area will either be split into two area codes, or new lines will get a different area code, which is called an overlay zone. The new area code will be 657. What do you think? It’s OK. I guess. 657 seems a little more aloof and not quite as friendly as 714, probably because 714 is an old friend.

Do you know how long it’s been around? You could have knocked me over with a feather. The 714 calling area was peeled away from the 213 area in 1951. In fact, California was one of the first states to use area codes, in 1947.

Don’t mean to bring this up since I have major age issues, but I can remember when there were no area codes at all, just word prefixes, which I miss, frankly. In the place from which I came, which is called the Bronx, our prefix was Fairbanks and our number was Fairbanks 4-1335, which you dialed as F-A-4-1335. Phone numbers in the Fordham area started with Rose Hill, which is what the area used to be called. Wouldn’t you rather have a phone number that starts with Rose Hill than 714 or 949 or, gasp, 657? So would I, but get over it.

The crush for new phone numbers is on, and you can squeeze a zillion times more combinations out of ten numbers than from two letters and five numbers.

OK fine, but why do we need so many numbers anyway?

You could say it’s because there are so many more people these days, but if you did, you’d be wrong. Ten years ago, there were 13 area codes in California. Today there are 27, a more than 100% increase. How much has the population grown in the same 10 years? Fifteen percent. So what’s the problem?

You know the answer, I’m sure, because you are not just good looking but really, really smart. It’s cellphones, of course.

Cellphones, cellphones and more cellphones. Until further notice, it’s all cellphones all the time. Pretty soon, if you’re caught in public without a cellphone, it’ll be a $500 fine and up to 120 days in jail, and getting stopped for DWNUCP (Driving While Not Using a Cellphone) will get you a $2,500 fine and up to one year. Throw in the demand for additional lines for fax machines, dial-up modems and high-speed Internet access, and there are thousands of requests a week in Orange County alone for new telephone numbers. At this rate, there will be a different area code every three blocks.

As far as splitting the 714 calling area goes, businesses in central and northern Orange County are not amused. The people in charge of things like South Coast Plaza, the Magic Kingdom (see “Happiest Place on Earth”), Knott’s Berry Farm, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and a boatload of hotels, restaurants and other tourism-type things say that after 50 years, 714 connotes Orange County to people far and wide. 657? Not so much.

Quick, what do you think of when you hear these numbers: 212, 415, 619, 714? New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Orange County. See? It works. The biz people say do the overlay zone if you must, but make the new numbers 657. As for the old numbers, don’t touch nothin’.

Actually, the whole history of phone numbers is interesting, assuming you find painfully obscure and totally useless information interesting.

In 1877, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell made that historic first call and said, “Watson, come here. I need you,” to which Watson replied, “I’m sorry, who is this?” the first commercial telephone line was fired up between Boston and Somerville, Mass. By the way, the first telephones were rented out in pairs and only worked with each other, kind of like a kid’s first walkie-talkie set.

By the late 1880s, there were 47,900 telephones in the United States but not a single iPod. The first lines between New York and Chicago were completed in 1892, and the transatlantic cable — which made it possible for the U.S. and Europe to be mad at each other by phone instead of in person — was completed in 1915. The first phone numbers were four digits in rural areas and five digits in cities. Before direct dialing came around in the late 1940s, you needed an operator to make a call.

In the early days, you talked to an actual, living, breathing, human person called a “hello girl” who patched you through to the number you were calling. By 1930, humongous switching centers housed hundreds of women called operators at mechanical switchboards. The operators would manually move patch cables from one place to another on the board to place the call. They didn’t say anything unless something went wrong, but you could hear them unplugging and re-plugging cables.

As mentioned earlier, in 1947, with new telephone numbers disappearing faster than orange groves, California led the charge with area codes. There were just three of them, until 213 and 714 parted ways in 1951, then 619 for San Diego in 1982, 909 for the Inland Empire in 1992 and 949 for South Orange County in 1998.

And now, in less than a year, the Age of 657 begins. It is called the march of time, and nothing can stop it.

Little did Alexander Graham Bell know what he started when he made that six-word call to Watson. Although writer Fran Leibowitz has the best line about the telephone, I think: “Being a teenager is the last stage in life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.”

So that’s it then. If the phone rings, don’t answer. It could be 657 calling.

I gotta go.