Other Crap

The History of Area Codes. It turns out there used to be some logic behind it at the beginning.

1. In the first 1947 assignment of the codes, all areas got a 0 or 1 as the middle number. If an entire state got a single area code, the middle number was zero. If there were multiple area codes in a state, they all got a 1 in the middle. The numbers zero and one were never used in the first digit, and zero was never used in the ending digit. One was used in the ending digit only if not used in the middle. (Thus a number could end in 01, but not in 11.)
2. In the days of rotary phones, the most populated areas were assigned the numbers that required the shortest "pulls" on the phone. Based on the logic in rule 1, the "shortest" possible area code (least distance for the rotary phone to move) was 212, so that code went to NYC. The next two shortest would be 213 and 312, so those went to LA and Chicago.