In May 2003 we received e-mail from John, who said he was a staffer with Alaska Sen. Ernest Gruening during the period 1967-1968, when the 911 number was first conceived. He included an account that we had not heard of before. Some of his recollections are verified by documents we've posted, but others are not. Here is the e-mail he sent us:

I read with interest the various theories on how 911 was chosen for the nationwide emergency number in the US. The ones posted on your site are interesting, but not correct. What happened was the following.

One of the staff members of Senator Ernest Gruening has taken leave to go on a summer trip in Europe in the summer of 1966. Flying first into London, he noticed that the English had implemented a 999 nationwide emergency number which struck the staffer as a good idea. He simply filed it away in his memory, finished his summer in Europe and returned to Washington back on the Senator's staff.

Then one morning he overheard another of the Senator's staff talking to the Senator in Juneau [Alaska] (where he was running for reelection in 1968, though the date of the conversation may actually have been 1967) and the Senator said that he had to give a speech that night in Juneau and did anyone have an idea for a topic? This jogged the staffer's memory and he said "why don't we introduce a bill to establish a nationwide 911 emergency number?"

The Senator thought that was a great idea and kicked off the idea with a speech that night in Juneau. The reason 911 was picked was also simple. At the time (and this you can check) in the Washington area there was 211 for time and weather (long since dead now) and 411 for information (which still exists). So he naturally borrowed the 9 from the British 999 system and simply added the 11 to match the other already existing and simple to remember numbers.

If you research around this time, you will find the following:

1. that Senator Gruening introduced a "sense of Congress" resolution on the matter and held widely attended hearings as a subcommittee chairman. This is a matter of public record which you could find.

2. Time Magazine had an editorial on the subject around the same time, essentially calling it a great idea, but that they thought that people would continue to simply dial "O" for operator and yell for help. How wrong they were.

3. The matter also got wide coverage on the national news shows at the time, which you could also probably find if you researched.

4. What you can't find (and they wouldn't admit) was that ATT was actually initially opposed to the idea for cost reasons. Their lobbyist called the Senator's office and essentially said "what are you guys doing to us? Do you know how much it will cost to reprogram our computers to do this? 50 million dollars." He was told that he had better tell ATT to add a nickel to everyone's phone bills each month to pay for it then, because the Senator had huge support in cosigners from both houses of Congress and ATT was the only one that didn't like the idea.

No money was appropriated for the effort, by the way, because it was right in the middle of both the Vietnam War and the Great Society legislation and none was around. That was why the sense of Congress resolution was used, giving Congress' view on what should be done, but leaving the initiative to the states and municipalities, which is still, I believe, how it is run today.

[unsigned]

In response to this e-mail, we sent back a reply asking for more information, and received the following response:

The reason for the presidential commission report was due to the obviously good politics that emanated from the idea, which as I mentioned in my email was the reason it began in the first place. It was hard to imagine anyone being against the idea (which even ATT recognized pretty early after it was introduced). The Senator was simply looking for a speech idea that night in Juneau and the rest was serendipity (as politics frequently is). Also, it is important to remember the context of the time. The Vietnam War was in full thrust as was the Great Society legislation. The two ate up all the available Federal government resources, which is why the sense of Congress route was chosed instead of direct funding. Money was simply not available.

There were also some surprises. We thought at the time that the idea would probably die of its own accord after it was introduced, due to lack of funding. The first surprise was that two of the most conservative lobbying groups in the US at the time, the Police Chiefs Association and the Fire Chiefs Association (I don't know if those are their exact names, but those were the groups I remember) came out very strongly supporting the idea. This was a surprise because Senator Gruening was a liberal Democrat and was hardly supported by these groups in the normal course of politics.

The second surprise was that in hearings held by Gruening's Subcommittee on Government Operations on the resolution, testimony came out that, on average, if a person in an emergency didn't receive initial assistance within something like the first 15 minutes (again I don't remember the exact times, but it was something like that) the probability of them being seriously injured or dying went up exponentially. To give this assistance required qualified personnel to be receiving the calls, which is why the ATT "just call the operator" idea made no sense and why the country needed a system like 911.

Again, this was serendipitous and came out after the fact in the hearings, at which point we all realized that we were on to something far bigger than we had initially thought.

As for documentation, both the sense of Congress resolution and the subcommittee hearings are a matter of public record that you should be able to obtain either from the Government Printing Office and/or through your senator or congressmen, though it may take a little research to find the exact dates of them. Another resource would be the Congressional Daily in which numerous speeches on the subject around the time were made.

The resolution would also show who the cosponsors were. I remember them basically beating down our door to sign up where we normally had to do a lot of horse trading on bills. Nothing like a sure thing politically to do that. Similarly, the Time editorial should be available through the Time Warner archives and perhaps other sources. A good reporter should be able to advise you on that. The subcommittee hearings should provide you with quite a lot of dialogue.

My connection to it was that I was on the Senator's staff at the time working while I was completing my degree at Georgetown University--a fairly common arrangement in those days so we students could pay our way through school.

Regards,

John

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