The Evolution of the 555 phone number …

Last night while watching 88 minutes it struck me..why do they always use 555. I mean..its obvious WHY they use it, but how did it come about that 555 would be THE prefix for all fake numbers … or almost all.

One of the first appearance of the 555 prefix was found during a 1962 movie called ‘Panic in Year Zero’ and they used 555-2106. Telephone companies started to encourage the use of the 555 prefix to avoid a bunch of unwanted telephone calls to people that had the phone number being used. Since 555 is reserved strictly for directory assistance, regular customers wouldn’t posses these numbers. More specifically 555-0100 through 555-0199 are reserved with the sole purpose of allowing them to be used for fictional purposes.

This method works great, until you get a movie that goes the unconventional route and uses a real telephone number like ‘Bruce Almighty’ did back in 2003. When getting calls on his pager from God, the number came across as 776-2323. No area code was used, so any telephone number with this area code got bombarded with calls. Oddly enough two different churches, one in North Carolina, and the other in Georgia got berated with telephone calls. The Pastor at the church in Sanford North Carolina was actually named Bruce! Both of these places along with about 5 other organizations got bombarded with telephone calls. One of them even considered taking Universal to court over all of the fake calls. They later changed the number for the DVD and TV releases to 555-0123.

Of course we all know the classic 867-5309 number for ‘Jenny’ made famous by ‘Tommy Tutone’ essentially one hit wonders. For years people were bombarded with telephone calls who had this number. Eventually a company named Gem Plumbing & Heating trademarked the telephone number in 2005 and have been using the number with a 617 area code for advertising a promotional purposes since 2002. No one else is “allowed” to have this number any longer due to their trademark.

So there you have it folks the evolution of the 555 phone number. If you want to see a comprehensive list of uses of the 555 number check this out.