On a telephone, why does ABC start on the number 2 and not 1?

Question

On a telephone, why does ABC start on the number 2 and not 1?

Answer 1

Local exchanges used to start with letters. No letter could use "1" because that indicates a long-distance call.

Answer 2

1's and 0's were reserved for 1plus dialing and 0plus dialing.

Answer 3

Bcoz 2 is greatest 1st no after 1

Answer 4

THESE DAYS MOBILE PHONES HAVE PUNCTUATION AS 1

Answer 5

maybe because they didn't feel like it

Answer 6

This is a Q & A in different format for your question.

My phone keypad maps the letters differently than PhoneSpell does.

The Bell Telephone standard mapping for digits to letters originally was:

Bell Telephone number-to-letter mapping:

1=>       2=> ABC   3=> DEF   4=> GHI   5=> JKL

6=> MNO   7=> PRS   8=> TUV   9=> WXY   0=>    

Now this made a lot of sense to Bell Telephone (it is a very long story) but has some obvious problems for those of us trying to get the best mapping of phone numbers to words. The most obvious problem is that 1 and 0 both have no letters associated with them, so any number with 1 or 0 cannot be represented with letters. The other big problem is that the letters Q and Z do not have digits associated with them, so words with Q or Z cannot be represented with numbers.

The good news is that these problems are easily solved by changing the mapping of digits to letters; the bad news is that there is no agreement on what the new mapping should be. Some keypads just add Q to 7 and Z to 9 and leave it at that. Some put Q and Z on 0. Some start all over and put ABC on 1 and end up with XYZ on 9. Still, the vast majority of keypads stick to the Bell original. PhoneSpell uses the slightly modified keypad with Q on 7 and Z on 9.

PhoneSpell number-to-letter mapping:

1=>       2=> ABC   3=> DEF   4=> GHI   5=> JKL

6=> MNO   7=> PQRS  8=> TUV   9=> WXYZ  0=>

Answer 7

very interesting question i just found the answer let's just share:

In the early days of the Canadian and American unified telephone numbering system, the three digit prefix had a word associated with it. For example my phone number could be YORK 9374. That would be dialed YOR-9374. The 1 digit had no alphabet letters assigned to it, because in those days, the prefix could not have a 1 in it. The thinking was that a phone number would be easier to remember if it combined a word and a number, also, in those days, the prefix word indicated the neighborhood the phone number was in

Answer 8

one of the great mysteries of life.

Answer 9

Those designers again, they don't know what they are doing.

Answer 10

Saved to use when dialling long distance.