Three Ringy-Dingys, Four Ringy-Dingys

Codes Revealed

Recently I’ve had occasion to telephone people in India, France and Britain - calls that diminished my bank account and made me wonder about the country codes that are assigned to every nation on Earth. Without them you can’t ring your pals on the Faroe Islands and order up a box of fresh salmon, nor can you demand a hot, steamin’ load of bauxite from Australia. The codes were created by the International Telecoms Union, a club of each country’s major telephone provider, part of the UN. The current president is actress Lily Tomlin in character as Ernestine the Telephone Operator. She starts every speech to member nations with, “A gracious good morning to you”, an excellent way to begin a palaver on the blower with a telemarketer. The code assignments, done in the early 1960s, were not as straight forward as you’d expect.