The Babylonians used separate combinations of two symbols to represent every single number from 1 to 59. That sounds pretty confusing, doesn’t it? Our decimal system seems simple by comparison ...

The use of binary numbers date back to ancient Egypt, but it was 17th-century philosopher and mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who created the current binary number system used today.

The new policy reflects the need to deal with a scarcity of 480 numbers, with still-ample numbers in the other two Phoenix area codes, especially 623.