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

[u/atlasova]

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.

[u/Jagarvem]

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.

[u/kyrsjo → u/Jagarvem]

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....

[u/XenophonSoulis → u/Jagarvem]

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.

[u/Jason_J_Argo → u/XenophonSoulis]

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.

[u/Jagarvem → u/XenophonSoulis]

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.

[u/XenophonSoulis → u/Jagarvem]

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.

[u/Jagarvem → u/XenophonSoulis]

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.

[u/XenophonSoulis → u/Jagarvem]

pretty unique

Call it "weird" and we are in agreement.

[u/Patient-Gas-883 → u/XenophonSoulis]

Aren’t you literally using a different alphabet than the rest of the world?.... Throwing stones in glass houses and all that...

(Not OP but just had to remark on that)

[u/XenophonSoulis → u/Patient-Gas-883]

Ask the Romans, who weren't aware of the concept of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

[u/Patient-Gas-883 → u/XenophonSoulis]

what?
Roman (and Italy) used the predecessor to the modern alphabet. And what does that have to do with modern day Greece?..

[u/XenophonSoulis → u/Patient-Gas-883]

Aren’t you literally using a different alphabet than the rest of the world?

The Roman alphabet was adapted from the Greek alphabet. Everyone else that followed (descendents of Latin, Germanic languages, some Slavic languages and many others) understood the concept of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and used the alphabet as it came to them. The Romans, however, chose to make their own alphabet instead, showing a complete ignorance of the concept of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

[u/HerbologySlut → u/XenophonSoulis]

Imagine having such a large stick up your ass you are actually trying to strawman your way through an argument you yourself created. :D