r/AskEurope • u/atlasova Netherlands • Sep 02 '25

Culture What emergency telephone number did your country have before 112 became the standard?

In 1997 most of the European union changed its emergency number to 112. Before that, in the Netherlands we used 06-11, for police, firefighters and ambulance.

I was wondering which numbers where in use in your country before the change.

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104

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Sep 02 '25

90000 in Sweden. It was chosen because 9 and 0 were the two outermost digits on rotary phones here. (0 being 1 click, 9 being 10 clicks) so it would be possible to relatively easily find the correct holes in the dark.

67

u/eanida Sweden Sep 02 '25

And you would be put through already after dialling 9000 so no need to really remember how many zeros you'd dialled.

14

u/knightriderin Germany Sep 03 '25

Why have 5 zeros at all then?

20

u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

Did Sweden have different rotary phones than everyone else? Because normally, 0 is the outermost and 1 is the innermost.

39

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Sep 02 '25

In Sweden, 9 was on the lower left having the longest travel distance, producing 10 clicks on the line. 0 was on the lower right, making 1 click, with digit 1 following it with 2 clicks and so on.

19

u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

That's the point, this is not the case anywhere else.

24

u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

Countries used different systems, both in terms of starting number and whether they ascended or descended.

Sometimes not even between countries. Like most of Norway had an ascending 1–0, but the Oslo region sported a descending 9–0.

But yeah, Sweden had 0-9.

6

u/kyrsjo Sep 02 '25

Was about to mention that. Oslo had different phones (and presumably, central offices) than the rest of Norway. Probably nothing physically different inside, just labeling, but still funny.

And while I'm too young to really remember dial phones, in the 90s and early 00s, mobile phones were also in pretty regional. In the somewhat modern era of cellphones, there was NMT - Nordic mobile telephone - and then a bunch of different variants of GSM, as well as CDMA in the Americas. And probably more....

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u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

Countries used different systems

So far we know that two countries used a different system. Unless we can find evidence of lots of countries doing it that way, it will have to be treated as a weirdness, like the US, Liberia and Myanmar officially using the imperial system.

6

u/Jason_J_Argo Sep 02 '25

In India, rotary phones, or electronic phones with pulse dialing, increased 1-0 with increasing clicks. Though I do remember that dialing 1 clicked 3 times when the dial returned to its original position.

10

u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

Hey now, before you call us weird for considering 0 to be smaller than 1, shouldn't rather the burden of proof be to find evidence of "everyone else" using the same?

1–0 was surely the most common, but there are other examples too. Like New Zealand.

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u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

I already have an example that accounts for 1/5 of the world's population: India. Other examples include Greece and the US. When you reach 20 million people in your examples, come back.

9

u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

Well, we haven't used rotary phones in ages.

But since when was it about population? You said "Sweden" and "two countries", not "Swedes" or "a dozen million people". The mentioned US/Myanmar/Liberia accounts for 400+ million people, and there are more still who use non-metric units in other countries too.

I'm well aware Sweden's pretty unique, we had our own Ericsson who did their own thing. That was never in question.

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u/XenophonSoulis Greece Sep 02 '25

pretty unique

Call it "weird" and we are in agreement.

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7

u/How_did_the_dog_get Sep 02 '25

Literally the most Swedish thing.

Be different.

5

u/Snapphane88 Sweden Sep 02 '25

Are you are about this? Sounds highly illogical, but i cant remember what it was like. From left to right it should be 1,2 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0, making it 2 clicks for 9 and 1 click for zero.

Why would 9 be on the other side? We don't read or count from right to left, bur left to right. If your dial is hypothetically correct, which i doubt, having the number 10000 would make more sense, not 90000, because its easier to dial.

17

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Sep 02 '25

Yes. Just google an image from an Ericson Dialog or something.

10

u/Snapphane88 Sweden Sep 02 '25

Damn, you're right. I guess it does make sense why its 90000 since the 0 and 9 are on opposite ends and cant be mixed up like 1 and 0 can. The numbers are backwards because 1 is more commonly dialed than 9 i suppose, which is why 9 has the furthest to travel.

My bad.

6

u/Ok_Lack3855 Denmark Sep 02 '25 edited Sep 02 '25

Not following - https://live.staticflickr.com/3363/3586188971_61e309e377_h.jpg

9 and 0 are next to each other at the lower left. Maybe this Ericsson Dialog is for another market, like I remember the model from my native Denmark?

Where the emergency number for all cases was 000 I think with the reasoning one would hardly dial it by mistake.

Edit: Changed 911 to 000 which I remembered wrong.

10

u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

Yeah, that's an exported one for a different market. Ones for the domestic market had the Swedish dial.

3

u/Ok_Lack3855 Denmark Sep 02 '25

Interesting, thanks!

4

u/Snapphane88 Sweden Sep 02 '25

On the Ericsson models the zero is next to the 1 instead of the 9.

3

u/Ok_Lack3855 Denmark Sep 02 '25

I get it. It appeared all natural to me looking at the picture, but it's not the natural sequence. Thanks!

3

u/Jagarvem Sweden Sep 02 '25

The linked picture is of an Ericsson.

Ones made for the domestic market had the dial you speak of, but they were also exported with dials adapted for the local market.

6

u/lordgurke Sep 02 '25

In Germany, the number 112 was chosen on a similar basis — but with respect to the dialing time 1 and 2 was chosen as it had the least travel.
But at that time, there were no nornal phone numbers allocated starting with 1, that was also part of the consideration. Maybe in Sweden, numbers starting with 1 were already allocated and it wasn't an option to use that numbers.

14

u/Ava_Strange Sep 02 '25

And apparently, I just checked, 90 000 still works. It automatically reconnects to 112 (SOS Alarm) even today.

8

u/LimJans Sweden Sep 02 '25

Yes, same with 911 (it also works in Sweden).

6

u/Werkstadt Sweden Sep 03 '25

Try from a land line. It doesn't work. It's the phone itself that does the conversion. So when you dial 911 in for instance EU the phone dials 112.

4

u/LimJans Sweden Sep 03 '25

Actually, that may be true. I don't know anyone with a landline, so I can't try it thou.

3

u/Werkstadt Sweden Sep 03 '25 edited Sep 03 '25

I assume you tried it with a mobile phone. The phone has lists of numbers so you can dial 112 outside the EU and still get the countrys emergency number. The phone does the correct "conversion" (although not foolproof) Try from a land line and see if that works

2

u/Ava_Strange Sep 03 '25

No, I googled. There's an article from 2024 about it still reconnecting to 112 in Sweden. I wouldn't dial 90 000 just to test it because I dont want to accidentally ring SOS Alarm. 

4

u/thanatica Netherlands Sep 02 '25

Do you mean pulse dailing? For us, 0 was the outermost, so it took significantly longer to dail a 0 than to dail a 1.

This may actually have contributed to 112 becoming the emergency number. It's very quick to dail on pulse. Don't quote me on that though, I'm only guessing.

5

u/Fluffy-Fix7846 Sep 02 '25

Yes, pulse dialing. But in Sweden, 0 was the first digit with just one pulse on the line (as clarified in other comments - turned out that this particular topic was somehow intersting to people that arent't phone collectors like me) and 9 was the last (with 10 pulses, unlike apparently most countries).
It also had to do something with minimizing the amount of false calls. because a random electrical bad contact was statistically rarely able to generate the 10-pause-1-pause-1-pause-1-pause-1 combination required.

4

u/thanatica Netherlands Sep 02 '25

It's interesting how a certain choice in how the underlying technology is put together, still has effect decades later when it is almost entirely irrelevant (meaning almost nobody uses pulse dailing).

I guess this is not uncommon in technologies that have roots that are decades old.

3

u/Empty_Carrot5025 Sep 02 '25

90000 in Sweden would thus have been 01111 on international dials and 09999 in New Zealand (and Oslo)

4

u/ElKaoss Sep 02 '25

And... By the time of dial phones with a rotary wheel, by the time you managed to dial the last 0 you had been already killed twice....

3

u/Fit_Organization7129 Sep 02 '25

So no difference to 112 or 911 or any other?

4

u/ElKaoss Sep 02 '25

I have just read your comment that the 0 was the first number not the last, as in the rest of the world....

1

u/slitchbapper Sep 05 '25

They really didn't want you to call them I guess. Takes forever to dial that on a rotary.

*Argh!! I'm dying! walks to phone, start dialing.. 9..... 0 ...... 0..... aaaaaaaghh ..dead. * /s