On February 16th, 1968, the first 9-1-1 emergency call in United States history was placed in the small town of Haleyville, Alabama. Dialed at 2:00 PM by Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite from the Mayor's office at City Hall, the ceremonial call was answered a short distance away at the local police station by U.S. Representative Tom Bevill on a bright red rotary telephone. The digits 9-1-1 were chosen by At&T as it was short to remember in a crisis, "1" was the fastest digital to dial on a rotary phone, and 9-1-1 had not been used as an area code in the United States. Despite the success in Alabama, the emergency system did not become nationwide overnight. By 1987, only 50% of the U.S. population had access to 9-1-1. Today, the system is nearly universal in the United States and Canada, handling over 240 million calls per year.
