Doomed to Fail - Ep 234: 911 - From Switchboards to Text Messages, what's your emergency?

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Let's talk the invention of 911 (that's 999 or 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3 if you're British). Did you know it wasn't full adopted in the US until the 2000s?? We'll go over AT&T, telephone lines, and switchboards!  You'll also hear Taylor list every time she's called 911 - feel free to share your 911 stories with us!  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. All right and Taylor, how are you doing? Good. How's your library going? Good. He's outside making shelves.

Cutting wood. That's fun. It's like a paper mache shelf. okay that seems not as strong as it probably should be but you know it's like not made up here but it's like wood and then he's going to plaster around it but i think he has like make the shelf section fun fun well it's progress one way or the other right so that's that's always a good thing um for anybody listening who is used to listening to this podcast you'll notice my audio quality is worse because my dogs ripped out and destroyed my um my reporting equipment so yeah that happened the last week. The last time we recorded it ended with a scream and Fars's computer just like going to the side

and I saw it was like swirls of nothing and then you left the Zoom so I had a feeling it was bad. They just, it was incredible. They broke all this stuff. They toppled light stuff. It looked like a hurricane and it gone through in like one second because they all...

They're huge, yeah. Yeah, they're huge and they all racked themselves up underneath the desk, which is full of cable, the cords and wires. And then if they see a squirrel, they don't really consider the ramifications of chasing after the squirrel that's outside the window. And I pay the price for it. So there you have it. Yeah. Such is life.

Cool. Do you want to go ahead and introduce us? Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome to doomed to fail. We bring you historical disasters and failures. And I am Taylor joined by Fars. I am here.

I'm going to tell us a story. I'm going to tell you a story, okay? And it's a story that is not a failure. It is a huge success. And, but if you have to engage with this topic, then something has failed somewhere in life. So it's sort of doomed to fail, is, right? All right, I'm ready. I don't know what it is.

Let's roll with that. I'm going to talk about the origin and the history and some fun little facts about 911. Oh, fun. Yeah. I am speaking about the emergency line, not the tragedy or the Porsche vehicle. It's a few things. We've agreed not to do 9-11. Or I've said we're not doing it. And we're not doing that.

We're not doing it. With me. So we're going to start with what life was like before 911 was implemented nationally. and we're going to get into a little bit of conversations about like how telephones worked. I know this is really exciting, but just stick with me. I'm building up to something here. So in the early days, the way you would place a phone call was typically you'd pick up a phone and operator on the other end would say number, please,

and you would give them the number you're trying to reach, and then they would manually plug a cord into a switchboard connecting your line to that line. That's the way it would work. If you've ever seen I Love Lucy, which I've watched a lot of, there's a few episodes where they do this. It would be fun. So in those days, if you were being stabbed or mauled by bear, you would have to go through this process, which adds a ton of time. It requires a ton of memory to do this. And so it was not an ideal system.

later on there was a thing called Electro-mechanical Selectors which were invented and in that situation you could skip going to the operator and dial the end destination yourself. In this case it would be either the fire department or the police department. Can you tell me when telephones were invented? I don't know that.

Because I'm just trying to imagine what I'm looking, what it's like. I'll look at it both fast. So I younger listeners might not recall this, but back in the day, we had to memorize people's numbers. I remember I had to remember my parents' work number. And there was a few of the numbers. 1876 is the answer. That's when Graham Bell did it, I think, right? Alexander Graham Bell?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, back in those days, you just have to remember numbers. I mean, you'd write some stuff down for the most part. You just remember numbers. And that's how you kind of went about your life. But like if you're in the middle of an emergency and you have to remember a number that you never ever dial because why would you? It's impossible.

Like you'd have to like remember every like three days. Okay, what was the number again? Okay. And eventually have it like sunk into a deep long-term memory. The National Association of Fire Chiefs were the first to make a public stink about the fact that it was incredibly hard for people to know who to call when they were in danger. and they suggested having a single number to use to report fires specifically. This was like the first time this ever, anybody ever actually raised us in any sort of a national capacity.

This was done in 1957. In 1966, the National Academy of Science, they were exploring the causes of death, and it revealed that timeliness to, in response times, to medical emergencies was like top the list. That was the biggest factor in whether someone lives or dies. So in 1960, so there's a steady drumbeat happening. It's kind of slow.

There's some studies being put behind it. It wasn't until 1967 that LVJ's administration came out in support of the idea, with the original intent being to have a single number, just like in the most densely populated metropolitan areas. Maybe it expands to the whole country. Maybe it doesn't. But that was the original idea. this was not a mandate.

This was not federally run. This was just a recommendation and a suggestion by the president. So in November of that same year, 1967, the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, met with the executives at AT&T to help them figure out how to go about doing this and achieving this goal, essentially. in January on January 12th of 1968 AT&T at this point basically had a monopoly for most parts they're still like local carriers but they could they kind of they could push their weight around quite a bit and they were the ones that came up with 911 as an emergency number so what AT&T said was what we're going to go with and the reason for it actually is partially if you

look at a rotary dial if you recall what that looks like where it's like a one and then it goes all the way around and ends it a nine and there's like a silver thing in the middle where you kind of twist the thing to the whole point of it was that the nine and the one are on opposite side so you can really quickly do two of the numbers and then you have to be very deliberate to go to the nine and also do that so a it was fast and b it was not prone to mistakes on a rotary phone that was the whole point behind it yeah Lastly, it was also part of like a broader, longer-term initiative to kind of standardized communications. So the whole point was the standard format for government entities called N-1-1 and standing for number.

Basically, a number followed by 1-1 being like a standard protocol for government services, government entities, 3-1-4-1-9-1. But I still didn't hear about those until like the early 2000s. Yeah, yeah. I think there was a lot of planning going, and I can tell why, given how long it took for this to actually come into a fruition. Actually, before I continue, when do you think 911 is a federal standard when it was officially designated? 1980. Okay. All right?

No, you're not. We're going to pin drop that and get back to it here in a little bit. That would have been exciting. So 35 days after AT&T had expressed their intent to standardize an emergency telephone line, And the CEO of another network provider, a guy named Bob Gallagher, who ran Alabama telephone company, was feeling a little bit feisty, a little bit competitive, and decided they're going to beat ATAT to the punch, which I think a lot of these local providers were trying to do because they thought that would make them big dogs and cool. And so they created and deployed the first 911 line that was actually usable. And frankly, this seems to be the only claim to fame for this company. It doesn't exist anymore.

The first call, 911 call was a test call, placed in Hallieville, Alabama, between the speaker of the Alabama House, a guy named Rankin Fight, and the U.S. House representative for Alabama, I think it was a fourth district, named Tom Bevel, using Alabama telephone company's 911 service. On March 1st of 1968, AT&T implemented the first working version of a new line, a new emergency. line in Huntington, in Huntington, Indiana. But that did not mean that everybody just immediately got access to 911. This is 1968. A little bit of backstory.

Have you heard the term Mo Bell? Yes. You know what that means? I was going to ask because I thought that the big monopoly was Bell, like Pacific Bell, Ma Bell, and they like took Ma Bell apart because that was like the biggest monopoly.

So I was surprised that 18th was even in there when you first said that. I was a little surprised too. But Ma Bell was the name colloquially, like nickname used for AT&T. And the reason was because Bell was this insane huge powerhouse that controlled a lot of local communications and the physical infrastructure to conduct those communications. AT&T was the parent company that owned Bell. So, yeah. Yeah, because, like, I mean, I have literally no idea how any of that works.

works, you know, like, I feel like the physicality of like having a lady be like, plug this in and you get to Fars. Makes more sense to me than being like dial this number and somehow it gets to Fars, you know? Or like anyone can dial this number from anywhere and you go to the one that's closest to you. You know, if I have my phone, I dial 911 in Austin, I'm not getting California 911. I'm getting Austin, right? Yeah, it's kind of remarkable. That's pretty cool. It is very cool.

Yeah. It's like magic, yeah. I agree with you. I don't totally understand. and I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not going to go into the nuances and details of how the switch works. Once again, it's really complicated.

In an apocalyptic situation, I believe we could build the printing press. I do not believe we could build the telephone. I don't think so either. I don't think so either. I don't think that's fine. Maybe a switchboard. Yeah, probably not that.

No, no, no, no. But I could make little stamps for the letters. That'd be cute. So I gave you that background to tell you that when, AT&T decided they're going to roll out this whole new program, and they're the 800-pound gorilla. They're the biggest provider in the country, and they own Bell.

They said that only providers running their service through Bell would have access to it. So Bell was providing kind of the hardware for this, which was legitimately a whole thing, because you had to create new versions of switchboards to be able to know that this is coming in, where to route it, when to route it there, so on and so forth. Right. Like there's so much infrastructure.

Yeah. So much infrastructure. And so as a result, independent telephone companies were kind of, they were for the most part excluded when this first came out. The way they would prevent this usage was, again, because the telephone, the bell who owned the telephone infrastructure was, the one providing the equipment, and so they could kind of gatekeep go through that route. So this problem would get solved eventually by legislation, but it would take quite a long time. In the interim, the small providers solved this by using a thing called a 911 tandem, which were basically circuits that were added to phone lines to automatically switch and route calls

to the appropriate public safety answering point, a PSAP, rather than routing them through the bell switchboard, which 182 was preventing. So that was kind of like their stock. They like, they addressed it at the telephone line and not of the switchboard line. So by the mid-1970, states were enacting legislation for telephone companies who hadn't implemented 911 to do so and to start collecting surcharges from subscribers to fund that program. By 1979, a federal report came out that showed only 26% of the U.S. population had access to 911. That's 1979. This was, yeah, this was mostly determined to be the cause of just no leadership at the federal level.

The federal government just would, over the administrations that passed between LBJ and this point, they're like, yeah, states, you'll deal with it, you figure it out. But like, state, how are you going to get, like, two states to communicate with each other and, like, engage with this, like, kind of con. I don't know. It seems like, it seems very. foolhardy. Yeah, it feels like such like a, I mean, I guess now, it's such like a no-brainer for public safety, you know?

Yeah. It's not like a maybe, especially when we know that like the reason, like that people die because it waits so long. Yeah, totally. There's no, there's no political reason not to do this. There's every political reason to do this. Yes, exactly.

So part of the state legislation that was happening was the creation of dedicated 911 centers, which were opening at a clip of about 70 centers per year by the 1980s. So because of this, because of the increased investment by states, because they started doing public advertising for 911 and emergency phone lines, at this point, it all kind of came into one between fire, ambulance, and police assistance. It all came into 911. This led to more growth and more usage of the number.

So by only eight years later, when it was 26%, by 1987, 50% of the U.S. had access to the number. 87. Wow. We still don't have 100%. And this is where I put down, Taylor, can you guess you're the federal government mandated to step in and do it? You already answered the question.

You said 1980, so you obviously know that's not the case. It took till 1999. What? That doesn't, but who was the last state to do it? So it was the federal government that came. out, the federal government passed this thing called the Wireless Communication and Public Safety Act, also known as the 911 Act, because that was the first time from a federal government perspective they mandated every state to implement 911 as the emergency line to provide the centers, the call centers, to provide the technology, all that stuff. Who was waiting, New Hampshire? I don't know, probably. Yeah.

So it actually, here's saying, it might not have been a whole state that was. waiting it out because a lot of this gets passed down to local local governments and municipalities. So it could have been like the smaller, you know, entities that were holding out. The 1999 Act also required a thing called Enhanced 911, which automatically finds the location the person is dialing in from, which is really cool.

Right. Because I remember that used to, like, that technology was also used for pizza. and that was the first time that they would know where you were calling from in pop culture as you can call Domino's and they would know your address and I feel like that's similar technology to the 911 you know

I think the pizza came first then they did it to save lives I think so too yeah that must be it Hawaii was one of the last ones did you 911 one oh that kind of tracks actually around 2000 2001

That does kind of track. This was also the law that mandated that any lines, phone lines, that aren't in service because of a non-payment have to be able to call 911. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah, just so you know, everyone, your old cell phone can call 911. Totally. 100%.

Yeah. And another fun fact that I learned that was spearheaded by New York City was 911 tapping protocol. So the idea was that if you're hearing impaired, how do you communicate that you need assistance? And so the idea, there was a methodology applied to this. The whole methodology behind it was if you were talking on a phone that had, like, if you were talking on, what do they call the phone booth? Yeah. And so long. Like a pay phone.

Yeah. If you're trying on a pay phone, then what you can do is call 911. And then you can do two patterns of tapping your finger on the phone. the receiver, depending on the type of service that you're looking for. So if you were to just do like a steady tap, like just consistently across the board, then that would mean you are in need of, which one was it? Hold on. Oh, you need emergency services.

So that's the police. Like you need police there. If you do a double tap, like a pattern of like double taps, then that means you're in need of either a fire or ambulance. And so the protocol recommends that you do the tapping for like 90 seconds or optimally until assistance arrives. Because I bet it just takes a while for the operator to like grasp what's happening. Exactly. You know, so that's kind of a unique thing that I never heard of.

There's also now a thing called text 2-911, which as of 2014 has been supported by the major carriers. unfortunately, it's only supported by 57% of emergency centers as of 2025. But the one good thing there is that if it's not supported, those centers are mandated to send a reply saying this isn't supported to call the number. At least they tell you that no one's heard. They tell you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

But you can see how useful that would be if you're an abusive situation. Like, just like quickly going to the bathroom and text. Like, that's incredibly handy. Yeah. And my last little fun fact here is that 32 countries use 911 as their emergency line. That's nice. Including Canada. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was going to check for Canada for our Canadian listeners. So we double check. That's cool. Yeah. Most of Europe uses 112. UK uses 999. There's like a bunch of variations there.

There's a, um, an episode of- You're going to say from out Reno 911, aren't you? I was going to. I have so many funny things to talk about. There's an episode of the IT crowd where the number is like really, really long. And it's just like really funny because you just like have to, it's like a song and it's like nine digits. And it's hilarious. Do you want to talk about all the times that you've called 911?

My daughter asked me this question all the time. I've called 911 and a bunch of fun, a bunch of fun times. One time. Really? Oh, yeah. Well, I guess that kind of lived in New York. I don't know. One time I was walking my boss's dog, which is super out of character for me.

six in the morning, like who, who is a person? The answer is I was poor and I needed money. But I was doing that and I walked past the city bank and the city bank whole vestibule covered in blood. Seriously? And I was like, okay. So I called 911. They were like, do you want to stay? And I was like, absolutely not. I'd like to leave because it was dark. And I was like early, really early in the morning. And then when I kind of swung by it again later, they were police and they're just like seriating at it. Because I was like, I don't want to do this. That's like covered, absolutely covered blood. One time I called because, oh, one time lightning hit a tree in front of my apartment and ripped all of the cables off of our wall and they were like floating in the air and

we had no no electricity went out and I called 911 and they um like the fireman that came into our house and like did all this stuff we didn't have electricity for a couple days one time I was walking with my husband to the train and a woman got out of a taxi with like an old man but the old man was like very big he was like a tall old man and he started to fall onto her and you could tell that like something was wrong so I like ran have a block to help her And we like gently put him on the floor and it was her dad. And he was like going to church to like meet his friends. And he was like very old and he was kind of like having like a thing.

So we laid him on the ground and I called him and one and went into the church and was like, we have your friend out here. He needs help. And then an ambulance came and took him. What else? A couple. I feel like I called one time because I was on the Brooklyn Bridge and there was a car accident underneath me because I was like I'm the walkway. underneath me. I called one time because in California there was a car accident in front of us. A car like rolled across the or like scooted all the way to the left hit the median and then

rolled across and that was really scary. So I called them when then. I feel like maybe that's it. Have you ever called? Were you running in between your head while I was doing this episode? No, so. Florence asks me this question a lot. She asks me how many times I call me one and I'm It was like, I called them when there is an emergency, and I know that, like, that the police would be able to help. One time my boss had a panic attack, and she thought she was having a heart attack. And she, like, messaged me, and she was like, I think I'm having our attack. I don't know what to do.

And I saw her, and she was just kind of like, she was just like was like a thing. So I called 911 and like a bunch of firemen came. Oh, one time I called 911 one, because it's from my apartment, it smelled like gasoline. And I was like, it just was like gasoline. And I don't know what to do. They sent like 15 firemen. They checked every car on our street and they found the one that was leaking. And they went to the guy's house.

and they were like, your car is leaking gasoline. I was like, if I flick a cigarette underneath this car, this whole neighborhood's going up, you know. So I called then, I think that might be it. But I've definitely called more than once. Oh, I called that one because there was a drunk driver in front of me in the middle of the day here one time. And he was like very obviously swerving.

And I was like, I don't like it. I don't like it at all, you know. So what, somebody did that to me. I had, I remember. Do you remember this? I had a dentist appointment, like somewhere. in L.A., like Glendale or something, and I didn't come to work

that morning, so I go to the dentist appointment. And in my car, driving two work, it's like 10.30 in the morning. And the police on the motorcycle pulls me over, and we got a report of a drunk driver. How much have you had today? It's like, here's my x-rays for my dentist. Like, what are you talking about? No, totally, but they were just checking

because, like, someone, because I was, I mean, when this guy was driving down, like, a main road, very obviously, like, I mean, maybe he was having a medical emergency. But it was enough that I was like, I need to tell the police because someone needs to make sure this person's okay and like off the road, you know? That's fair. That's fair. Yeah.

I only did one time I can think of. When I had that apartment off Rowena, remember that? The one that your friend hoped to be up with. I got home from work. It was kind of dark. And there was like a really elderly man who was laying on the ground like across from the unit. And I like was like, what's going on? He couldn't speak any English.

So I like sat there with him and kind of like had him put to put his arm with my shoulders. his knees were on the ground. And I was like, I need to lift this guy up. He was very small, he was very frail. And this woman comes by. I was like, don't lift him. He might break something. And I was like, in hindsight, like, what an idiot?

Of course I should lift him. Like, why would I let this old man suffer until cops come? But I called the police and they sent an ambulance and they helped kind of get him up. But I felt really bad. I got to the point where I was like, I should slide my hands underneath his knees so that at least he doesn't feel the concrete on his knees. per. He was so knobby who's old and knobby and very frail. It was really sad.

That reminds me of two more times I called 911. One time someone tried to break into our apartment while we were there in L.A. Do you remember that? I remember that. I'm trying to open the door with a set of like post office keys. And we were like very clearly home. And we like saw them through the keyhole or like whatever the people. And we called 911.

And then they had them come and my neighbor and my husband went outside and they flashed like the police car headlights into the guy's face so that he couldn't see us as like the witnesses and then um and then like they were like yeah that's him or whatever and then the police were like okay cool we're going to take him to Hollywood and drop them off oh cool seriously yeah great idea let's just bring him to the next town and drop him off that'll fix this problem we don't have to worry about it so that was incredible and then there was another one when someone maybe fell in a call I can't remember I lost it but I've called many many times what was it was it was the guy drunk or high or did he look insane or what was his deal? No, it was like an old couple.

I think they were just like. Confused. I think they were, I think they were probably high, honestly. You know? Yeah. But I don't know. But I don't know.

Yeah. I'm glad to be able to do it. You know, like I'm always like a, I'm like a just in case. I'd rather do it than not do it. Especially like, you know, with like the gas under that car. Like I could have not called, you know, I've been like whatever. But also like that could have been a big thing. and they're like as their job so they came over and checked it out and i was impressed that they

like found it and like took care of it they like puttied up the leak and stuff just called 911 one more no but it's good to know that you can i feel like i used to use 411 a lot for like information but the internet is here so it doesn't matter do you remember when we used to have to call a number to tell us the forecast for the the day or the next day remember that or like the movie phone the movie phone oh my god oh my god God. We're so old. All of those, all those things. I've told you how, like, when we were a couple years ago, we were, like, at, like, a picnic, a town picnic.

And we couldn't find my husband. So I was like, Miles, let's call dad. So I gave him my phone. And Miles, like, didn't know how to talk on the phone. He was, like, holding it, like, in front of his face and in the air and going, like, dad, dad. He, like, was trying to look at it, like, had it over the face. I was like, do you not know how to hold a phone to your ear? Like, Jesus Christ, to him what's going on?

new lesson for the family. But it's like how quickly that has, that has changed, you know, in like the, the 150 years that we've, that telephones have been invented. We have were able to do so much.

So that's actually why enhanced 911 one became a thing in 99 is because that's when cell phones started almost kind of becoming relevant to people's lives. And they were like, well, like someone calling from your city doesn't matter anymore. They could be from anywhere. And that's where they had to have an ANCEAPA, um,

9-11 to be able to track it. That totally makes sense. Yeah. Wow. There you go. That's our fun little story for the day that's somewhat uplifting. Yeah, I feel like we solved a problem. I think so.

That's good. That's good. You can call someone for help. Yeah. Yeah. Good things. Yeah. I hope you don't have to call.

But if you do, it's nice to know that they're there. 100%. Especially the firemen. Yeah. You know. What a tough gig. Got to live at the fire station for two nights with leader kids and family. But it's got to be fun.

The kind of pauses they may have to be fun. And you got to sit there and play poker. Yeah. It's like you could have like sit there with your friends where like it could turn deadly any minute. Yeah. Yeah. God bless them. I know.

Well, Taylor, do we have anything we want to shout out? I do have. I have a couple of things. One, Diane Warren got nominated for another Oscar today. If you don't know Diane Warren, go listen to our episode about Millie Vanilli. She wrote Blumen on the Rain and every other song that you've ever loved. And she's been nominated, she's nominated for Oscar every fucking year and she did it again. So congratulations, Diane Warren.

Two, I talked to our friend Nadine, who is in Canada. And she was saying how Canadian media is obsessed with Ryan Wedding, like the cartel guy. She's like, they talked about him all the time. And she was like so funny that you brought it up because like we haven't heard I didn't hear about him in I'm obsessed with the guy. I know. I was like I told her I was like the more we learn about him, the more we're kind of impressed. Yeah.

It's not great. But like I know. And then also she said it's under Bay where he grew up is actually like a bad part of Canada. So she's not surprised that that's where he is from and turned to drugs. But anyway. And it's about to be another. It's about to be a TV show and another like in depth podcast about it too is coming out, which is like again,

I'm just on top of shit somehow. Yeah, you're in the artery of popular culture. You are the popular culture. But no one knows. I'm just secretly in charge of stuff. You're like Nostradamus except for pop culture. Pretty fun. Good for me.

Yeah. And then I've also just been watching some, just as we get prepped for the winter. Olympics. Things are starting to pop up on my social feeds and I am getting more and more excited. I've seen some cool figure skaters and I saw a video of this woman who is a alpine skier working out and like it's insane. She's like squatting the whole time right? Because you have to like do this and go back and forth. And she's like holding like gigantic weights and like squatting it but then also like moving her hips, you know, to like get that muscle and it's wild. Their bodies are something else. Yeah. What they can do with them.

A lot of hot pods, and I'm excited. And that's all. Fun. Well, if you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, questions, write to us at Doomedafel pod at gmail.com. Find us all the social, the Doomnafell Pod. And that's it. That's it. Thank you, Fars.

Good luck with your headphone situation. Appreciate it. I'm going to try and work that out. Hopefully the audio will be better next to my report. Thanks all. Bye. Thank you.