Hudson Stuck
Hudson Stuck was a British native who became an Episcopal priest, social reformer, mountain climber in the United States. With Harry P. Karstens, he co-led the first expedition to climb Denali in June 1913, via the South Summit, he published five books about his years in Alaska. Two memoirs were issued in new editions including his account of the ascent of Denali. Stuck was graduated from King's College London, he lived there for the rest of his life. After working as a cowboy and teacher for several years in Texas, he went to University of the South to study theology. After graduation, he was ordained as an Episcopal priest. Moving to Alaska in 1904, he served as Archdeacon of the Yukon, acting as a missionary for the church and a proponent of "muscular Christianity", he died of pneumonia in Alaska. Stuck and the naturalist John Muir are honored with a feast day on April 22 of the liturgical calendar of the US Episcopal Church. Stuck was born in Paddington, England to James and Jane Stuck, he attended King's College London.
Yearning for a bigger life, he immigrated to Texas in 1885, where he worked as a cowboy near Junction City. He taught in one-room schools at Copperas Creek, San Angelo, San Marcos. In 1889 he enrolled to study theology at the University of the South in Tennessee. After completing his studies, Stuck became an Episcopal priest in 1892, he first served a congregation in Texas for two years. He was called to St. Matthew's Cathedral in Dallas in 1894. Two years he became dean, he stressed progressive goals in his sermons and published articles related to his causes. There he founded a night school for millworkers, a home for indigent women, St. Matthew's Children's Home. In 1903 he gained passage in Texas of the first state law against child labor, he preached and wrote against lynching. It was at an all-time high in the South around the turn of the century, the period when state legislatures were passing legislation and constitutions that disfranchised blacks and many poor whites. In 1904 Stuck moved to Alaska to serve with Missionary Bishop Peter Trimble Rowe.
Under the title Archdeacon of the Yukon and the Arctic, with a territory of 250,000 square miles, Stuck traveled between the scattered parishes and missions by dogsled and boat as well as foot and snowshoe. In his first year, Stuck established a church and hospital at Fairbanks, the new boomtown filling up with miners and associated hangers on; some staff came from Klondike. The small hospital treated epidemics of meningitis and typhoid fever, as well as pneumonia common in the North. In 1905, Rev. Charles E. Betticher, Jr joined Stuck in Alaska as a missionary, they founded numerous missions in the Tanana Valley over the next decade: at Nenana, St. Barnabas at Chena Native Village, St. Luke's at Salcha, St. Timothy's at Tanacross. All served the Alaska Natives of the region. Tortella School was the only boarding school to serve native children in the Interior of Alaska, was supported by scholarships and offerings raised by the Episcopal Church. Missionary Anne Cragg Farthing was the primary teacher.
Her brother was bishop of Ontario. Five hundred miles up the Koyukuk River from its confluence with the Yukon, at its junction with its tributary the Alatna River, in 1907 Stuck founded a mission he called Allakaket but others called St. John's in the Woods for the several hundred Indians here. For years Episcopal woman missionaries ran the remote station just above the Arctic Circle, including Deaconess Clara M. Carter and Clara Heintz; the mission served both Iñupiat, who were settled on opposite sides of the river. The latter had come up the Kobuk River from lower areas, thus the missioners had two Native languages to learn. To reach the scattered populations of miners and other frontiersmen, Stuck started the Church Periodical Club. Based in Fairbanks, it collected and distributed periodicals to all the missions and to other settlements where Americans gathered, it did not have only church literature, in some locations, it provided the only reading material around. Stuck traveled each winter more than 1500 -- 2000 miles by dogsled to visit the villages.
In 1908, he acquired the launch called a shallow riverboat. He used it on the Yukon River and tributaries to visit the Athabascans in their summer camps, where they fished and hunted, he reported that in twelve seasons' cruises, ranging from i,800 to 5,200 miles each summer, he traveled a total of up to 30,000 miles along the rivers. Stuck wrote and published five books, memoirs of his times in Alaska, in part to reveal the exploitation of the Alaska Native peoples that he witnessed in his work. Stuck had experience mountain climbing, including having ascended Mount Rainier in Washington state. Stuck recruited a respected guide, to join his expedition. Other members were Walter Harper and Robert G. Tatum, both 21, two student volunteers from the mission school, Johnny Fred, Esaias George, they departed from Nenana on March 17, 1913. They reached the summit of Denali on June 7, 1913. Harper, of mixed Alaska Native and Scots descent, reached the summit first. Fredson 14, acted as their base camp manager, hunting caribou and Dall sheep to keep the
Alaska Senate
The Alaska Senate is the upper house in the Alaska Legislature, the state legislature of the U. S. state of Alaska. It convenes in the Alaska State Capitol in Juneau, Alaska and is responsible for making laws and confirming or rejecting gubernatorial appointments to the state cabinet and boards. With just twenty members, the Alaska Senate is the smallest state upper house legislative chamber in the United States, its members serve four-year terms and each represent an equal number of districts with populations of 35,512 people, per 2010 Census figures. They are not subject to term limits; the Alaska Senate shares the responsibility for making laws in the state of Alaska. Bills are developed by staff from information from the bill's sponsor. Bills undergo four readings during the legislative process. After the first reading, they are assigned to committee. Committees can hold legislation and prevent it from reaching the Senate floor. Once a committee has weighed in on a piece of legislation, the bill returns to the floor for second hearing and a third hearing, which happens just before the floor vote on it.
Once passed by the Senate, a bill is sent to the opposite legislative house for consideration. If approved, without amendment, it is sent to the governor. If there is amendment, the Senate may either reconsider the bill with amendments or ask for the establishment of a conference committee to work out differences in the versions of the bill passed by each chamber. Once a piece of legislation approved by both houses is forwarded to the governor, it may either be signed or vetoed. If it is signed, it takes effect on the effective date of the legislation. If it is vetoed, lawmakers in a joint session may override the veto with a two-thirds majority vote; the Alaska Senate has the sole responsibility in the state's legislative branch for confirming gubernatorial appointees to positions that require confirmation. Current committees include: Past partisan compositions can be found on Political party strength in Alaska. Senators must be a qualified voter and resident of Alaska for no less than three years, a resident of the district from which elected for one year preceding filing for office.
A senator must be at least 25 years old at the time. Senators may expel a member with the concurrence of two-thirds of the membership of the body; this has happened only once in Senate history. On February 5, 1982, the Senate of the 12th Legislature expelled Bethel senator George Hohman from the body. Hohman was convicted of bribery in conjunction with his legislative duties on December 24, 1981, had defiantly refused to resign from his seat. Expulsion was not a consideration during the 2003–2010 Alaska political corruption probe, as Ben Stevens and John Cowdery were the only Senators who were subjects of the probe and neither sought reelection in 2008. Legislative terms begin on the second Monday in January following a presidential election year and on the third Tuesday in January following a gubernatorial election; the term of senators is four years and half of the senators are up for election every two years. The President of the Senate presides over the body, appointing members to all of the Senate's committees and joint committees, may create other committees and subcommittees if desired.
Unlike many other states, the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska does not preside over the Senate. Instead, the Lieutenant Governor oversees the Alaska Division of Elections, fulfilling the role of Secretary of State. Only two other states and Utah, have similar constitutional arrangements for their lieutenant governors; the other partisan Senate leadership positions, such as the Majority and Minority leaders, are elected by their respective party caucuses to head their parties in the chamber. ↑: Senator was appointed^a: Caucuses with the Republican-led majority Alaska House of Representatives Alaska State Capitol List of Alaska State Legislatures Alaska State Senate official government website Project Vote Smart – State Senate of Alaska
Anchorage, Alaska
Anchorage is a unified home rule municipality in the U. S. state of Alaska. With an estimated 298,192 residents in 2016, it is Alaska's most populous city and contains more than 40 percent of the state's total population. All together, the Anchorage metropolitan area, which combines Anchorage with the neighboring Matanuska-Susitna Borough, had a population of 401,635 in 2016, which accounts for more than half of the state's population. At 1,706 square miles of land area, the city is the fourth largest city by land in the United States and larger than the smallest state, Rhode Island, at 1,212 square miles. Anchorage is in the south-central portion of Alaska, at the terminus of the Cook Inlet, on a peninsula formed by the Knik Arm to the north and the Turnagain Arm to the south; the city limits span 1,961.1 square miles which encompass the urban core, a joint military base, several outlying communities and all of Chugach State Park. Due to its location equidistant from New York City and Tokyo, Anchorage lies within 9 1⁄2 hours by air of nearly 90% of the industrialized world.
For this reason, the Anchorage International Airport is a common refueling stop for many international cargo flights and home to a major FedEx hub, which the company calls a "critical part" of its global network of services. Anchorage has won the All-America City Award four times: in 1956, 1965, 1984–85, 2002, by the National Civic League, it has been named by Kiplinger as the most tax-friendly city in the United States. Russian presence in south-central Alaska was well-established in the 19th century. In 1867, U. S. Secretary of State William H. Seward brokered a deal to purchase Alaska from Imperial Russia for $7.2 million, or about two cents an acre. His political rivals lampooned the deal as "Seward's folly," "Seward's icebox," and "Walrussia." In 1888, gold was discovered along Turnagain Arm. Alaska became an organized incorporated United States territory in 1912. Anchorage, unlike every other large town in Alaska south of the Brooks Range, was neither a fishing nor mining camp; the area surrounding Anchorage lacks significant economic metal minerals.
A number of Dena'ina settlements existed along Knik Arm for years. By 1911 the families of J. D. "Bud" Whitney and Jim St. Clair lived at the mouth of Ship Creek and were joined there by a young forest ranger, Jack Brown, his bride, Nellie, in 1912; the city grew from its happenstance choice as the site, in 1914, under the direction of Frederick Mears, of a railroad-construction port for the Alaska Engineering Commission. The area near the mouth of Ship Creek, where the railroad headquarters was located became a tent city. A townsite was mapped out on higher ground to the south of the tent city noted in the years since for its order and rigidity compared with other Alaska town sites. In 1915, territorial governor John Franklin Alexander Strong encouraged residents to change the city's name to one that had "more significance and local associations". In the summer of that year, residents held a vote to change the city's name. However, the territorial government declined to change the city's name.
Anchorage was incorporated on November 23, 1920. Construction of the Alaska Railroad continued until its completion in 1923; the city's economy in the 1920s and 1930s centered on the railroad. Col. Otto F. Ohlson, the Swedish-born general manager of the railroad for nearly two decades, became a symbol of residents' contempt due to the firm control he maintained over the railroad's affairs, which by extension became control over economic and other aspects of life in Alaska. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, the city experienced massive growth as air transportation and the military became important. Aviation operations in Anchorage commenced along the firebreak south of town, which residents used as a golf course. An increase in air traffic led to clearing of a site directly east of town site boundaries starting in 1929. However, Merrill Field still sees a significant amount of general aviation traffic. Elmendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson were constructed in the 1940s, served as the city's primary economic engine until the 1968 Prudhoe Bay discovery shifted the thrust of the economy toward the oil industry.
The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure process led to the combining of the two bases to form Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. On March 27, 1964, the magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake hit Anchorage, killing 115 people and causing $116 million in damages. The earth-shaking event lasted nearly five minutes, it was the world's second-largest earthquake in recorded history. Rebuilding dominated the remainder of the 1960s. In 1968, ARCO discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay on the Alaska North Slope, the resulting oil boom spurred further growth in Anchorage. In 1975, the City of Anchorage and the Greater Anchorage Area Borough merged into the geographically larger Municipality of Anchorage The city continued to grow in the 1980s, capital projects and an aggressive beautification campaign took place. During this time Anchorage became known as the "Gree
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding was the 29th president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular U. S. presidents to that point. After his death a number of scandals, such as Teapot Dome, came to light, as did his extramarital affair with Nan Britton, he is rated as one of the worst presidents in historical rankings. Harding lived in rural Ohio all his life, except; as a young man, he built it into a successful newspaper. In 1899, he was elected to the Ohio State Senate, he was defeated for governor in 1910, but was elected to the United States Senate in 1914. He ran for the Republican nomination for president in 1920, he was considered a long shot until after the convention began; the leading candidates could not gain the needed majority, the convention deadlocked. Harding's support grew until he was nominated on the tenth ballot, he conducted a front porch campaign, remaining for the most part in Marion and allowing the people to come to him, running on a theme of a return to normalcy of the pre-World War I period.
He won in a landslide over Democrat James M. Cox and Socialist Party candidate Eugene Debs and became the first sitting senator to be elected president. Harding appointed a number of well-regarded figures to his cabinet, including Andrew Mellon at Treasury, Herbert Hoover at the Department of Commerce, Charles Evans Hughes at the State Department. A major foreign policy achievement came with the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, in which the world's major naval powers agreed on a naval limitations program that lasted a decade, his cabinet members Albert Fall and Harry Daugherty were each tried for corruption in office. Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge. Harding was born on November 1865, in Blooming Grove, Ohio. Nicknamed "Winnie" as a small child, Harding was the eldest of eight children born to George Tryon Harding and Phoebe Elizabeth Harding. Phoebe was a state-licensed midwife. Tryon taught school near Mount Gilead, Ohio.
Through apprenticeship, study and a year of medical school, Tryon became a doctor and started a small practice. Some of Harding's mother's ancestors were Dutch, including the well-known Van Kirk family. Harding had ancestors from England and Scotland, it was rumored by a political opponent in Blooming Grove that one of Harding's great-grandmothers was African American. His great-great grandfather Amos Harding claimed that a thief, caught in the act by the family, started the rumor in an attempt at extortion or revenge. In 2015, genetic testing of Harding's descendants determined, with more than a 95% chance of accuracy, that he lacked sub-Saharan African forebears within four generations. In 1870, the Harding family, who were abolitionists, moved to Caledonia, where Tryon acquired The Argus, a local weekly newspaper. At The Argus, from the age of 11, learned the basics of the newspaper business. In late 1879, at the age of 14, Harding enrolled at his father's alma mater – Ohio Central College in Iberia – where he proved an adept student.
He and a friend put out a small newspaper, the Iberia Spectator, during their final year at Ohio Central, intended to appeal to both college and town. During his final year, the Harding family moved to Marion, about 6 miles from Caledonia, when he graduated in 1882, he joined them there. In Harding's youth, the majority of the population still lived in small towns, he would spend much of his life in Marion, a small city in rural Ohio, would become associated with it. When Harding rose to high office, he made clear his love of Marion and its way of life, telling of the many young Marionites who had left and enjoyed success elsewhere, while suggesting that the man, once the "pride of the school", who had remained behind and become a janitor, was "the happiest one of the lot". Upon graduating, Harding had stints as a teacher and as an insurance man, made a brief attempt at studying law, he raised $300 in partnership with others to purchase a failing newspaper, The Marion Star, weakest of the growing city's three papers, its only daily.
The 18-year-old Harding used the railroad pass that came with the paper to attend the 1884 Republican National Convention, where he hobnobbed with better-known journalists and supported the presidential nominee, former Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Harding returned from Chicago to find. During the election campaign, Harding worked for the Marion Democratic Mirror and was annoyed at having to praise the Democratic presidential nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland, who won the election. Afterward, with the financial aid of his father, the budding newspaperman redeemed the paper. Through the years of the 1880s, Harding built the Star; the city of Marion tended to vote Republican. Accordingly, Harding adopted a tempered editorial stance, declaring the daily Star nonpartisan and circulating a weekly edition, moderate Republican; this policy put the town's Republican weekly out of business. According to his biographer, Andrew Sinclair: The success of Harding with the Star was in the model of Horatio Alger.
He started with nothing, t
Alaska
Alaska is a U. S. state in the northwest extremity of North America, just across the Bering Strait from Asia. The Canadian province of British Columbia and territory of Yukon border the state to the east and southeast, its most extreme western part is Attu Island, it has a maritime border with Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas—southern parts of the Arctic Ocean; the Pacific Ocean lies to southwest. It is the largest U. S. state by the seventh largest subnational division in the world. In addition, it is the most sparsely populated of the 50 United States. Half of Alaska's residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, oil industries, resources which it has in abundance. Military bases and tourism are a significant part of the economy; the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867, for 7.2 million U. S. dollars at two cents per acre. The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912.
It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula, it was derived from an Aleut-language idiom. It means object to which the action of the sea is directed. Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America. It is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use. S. called "the Lower 48". The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system; the state is bordered by Yukon and British Columbia in Canada, to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest, the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, Chukchi Sea to the west and the Arctic Ocean to the north.
Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only 3 miles apart. Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, the next largest state. Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the combined area of the next three largest states: Texas and Montana, it is larger than the combined area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. There are no defined borders demarcating the various regions of Alaska, but there are six accepted regions: The most populous region of Alaska, containing Anchorage, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and the Kenai Peninsula. Rural unpopulated areas south of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains fall within the definition of South Central, as do the Prince William Sound area and the communities of Cordova and Valdez.
Referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States. As such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase; the region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States. It contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, Ketchikan, at one time Alaska's largest city; the Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital surface transportation link throughout the area, as only three communities enjoy direct connections to the contiguous North American road system. Designated in 1963; the Interior is the largest region of Alaska. Fairbanks is the only large city in the region. Denali National Park and Preserve is located here. Denali is the highest mountain in North America. Southwest Alaska is a sparsely inhabited region stretching some 500 miles inland from the Bering Sea. Most of the population lives along the coast.
Kodiak Island is located in Southwest. The massive Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, one of the largest river deltas in the world, is here. Portions of the Alaska Peninsula are considered part of Southwest, with the remaining portions included with the Aleutian Islands; the North Slope is tundra peppered with small villages. The area is known for its massive reserves of crude oil, contains both the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field; the city of Utqiagvik known as Barrow, is the northernmost city in the United States and is located here. The Northwest Arctic area, anchored by Kotzebue and containing the Kobuk River valley, is regarded as being part of this region. However, the respective Inupiat of the No
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
North American Numbering Plan
The North American Numbering Plan is a telephone numbering plan that encompasses twenty-five distinct regions in twenty countries in North America, including the Caribbean. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate in the NANP; the NANP was devised in the 1940s by AT&T for the Bell System and independent telephone operators in North America to unify the diverse local numbering plans, established in the preceding decades. AT&T continued to administer the numbering plan until the breakup of the Bell System, when administration was delegated to the North American Numbering Plan Administration, a service, procured from the private sector by the Federal Communications Commission in the United States; each participating country forms a regulatory authority that has plenary control over local numbering resources. The FCC serves as the U. S. regulator. Canadian numbering decisions are made by the Canadian Numbering Administration Consortium; the NANP divides the territories of its members into numbering plan areas which are encoded numerically with a three-digit telephone number prefix called the area code.
Each telephone is assigned a seven-digit telephone number unique only within its respective plan area. The telephone number consists of a four-digit station number; the combination of an area code and the telephone number serves as a destination routing address in the public switched telephone network. For international call routing, the NANP has been assigned the international calling code 1 by the International Telecommunications Union; the North American Numbering Plan conforms with ITU Recommendation E.164, which establishes an international numbering framework. From its beginnings in 1876 and throughout the first part of the 20th century, the Bell System grew from local or regional telephone systems; these systems expanded by growing their subscriber bases, as well as increasing their service areas by implementing additional local exchanges that were interconnected with tie trunks. It was the responsibility of each local administration to design telephone numbering plans that accommodated the local requirements and growth.
As a result, the Bell System as a whole developed into an unorganized system of many differing local numbering systems. The diversity impeded the efficient operation and interconnection of exchanges into a nationwide system for long-distance telephone communication. By the 1940s, the Bell System set out to unify the various numbering plans in existence and developed the North American Numbering Plan as a unified, systematic approach to efficient long-distance service that did not require the involvement of switchboard operators; the new numbering plan was accepted in October 1947, dividing most of North America into eighty-six numbering plan areas. Each NPA was assigned a numbering plan area code abbreviated as area code; these codes were first used by long-distance operators to establish long-distance calls between toll offices. The first customer-dialed direct call using area codes was made on November 10, 1951, from Englewood, New Jersey, to Alameda, California. Direct distance dialing was subsequently introduced across the country.
By the early 1960s, most areas of the Bell System had been converted and DDD had become commonplace in cities and most larger towns. In the following decades, the system expanded to include all of the United States and its territories, Canada and seventeen nations of the Caribbean. By 1967, 129 area codes had been assigned. At the request of the British Colonial Office, the numbering plan was first expanded to Bermuda and the British West Indies because of their historic telecommunications administration through Canada as parts of the British Empire and their continued associations with Canada during the years of the telegraph and the All Red Line system. Not all North American countries participate in the NANP. Exceptions include Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the Central American countries and some Caribbean countries; the only Spanish-speaking state in the system is the Dominican Republic. Mexican participation was planned, but implementation stopped after three area codes had been assigned, Mexico opted for an international numbering format, using country code 52.
The area codes in use were subsequently withdrawn in 1991. Area code 905 for Mexico City, was reassigned to a split of area code 416 in the Greater Toronto Area. Dutch-speaking Sint Maarten joined the NANP in September 2011, receiving area code 721; the NANP is administered by the North American Numbering Plan Administration. Today, this function is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, which assumed the responsibility upon the breakup of the Bell System; the FCC solicits private sector contracts for the role of the administrator. The service was provided by a division of Lockheed Martin. In 1997, the contract was awarded to Neustar Inc.. In 2012, the contract was renewed until 2017. In 2015, the contract beginning 2017 was granted to Ericsson; the vision and goal of the architects of the North American Numbering Plan was a system by which telephone subscribers in the United States and Canada could themselves dial and establish a telephone call to any other subscriber wi
