The Lost Art of Pager Code- Why "143" Means "I Love You"

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During a lesson about old technology, I found myself explaining to my students that the equivalent of texting was similar to the “ancient art” of communicating in pager code. Instead of using letters in an alphabet, numbers were put together to make a word. 


Personal pager devices that were attached to the hip were common in the late 1990’s-2000’s. Pagers are small devices that are used to “page” another recipient when a phone call back is desired. My first pager was a small pink pearl one that fit right into the palm of my hand. It had about 15 different “ringtones” I could choose from when someone was trying to contact me, and it had a relatively long battery life. 


A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper,[1] is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknowledge, reply to, and originate messages using an internal transmitter.[2] In Japanese, it was commonly called a pocket bell (Wikipedia)


Just as there are many ways to chant the popular Miss Susie had a Steamboat rhyme, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Susie -as there are different ways to decipher pager code alphabet. Here is the Southern California method:


143= "I Love You" (I= 1 letter, Love= 4 letters, You= 3 letters)

823= "Thinking of You" (Thinking= 8 letters, of= 2 letters, You= 3 letters)

637= "Always and Forever" (Always= 6 letters, and= 3 letters, Forever= 7 letters)


People also had personal numbers as codes so you knew who was texting (remember- it could be anonymous as the other end of the line could punch in whatever numbers they'd like).

So, for example, my friend Ashley would end her night paging me with:


143-637-844-16


(I love you, always and forever, BFF, Ashley #16)

I was #27. Megan was #183. Melissa was #03. 


So anyways. When a certain friend paged me with "81764," B-I-T-C-... It was proof that the "text wars" started way before smartphones. Communication always finds a way... 


Pager Code Alphabet:


A- 2

B- 8

C- 6

D- 6

E- 3

F- 4

G- 6

H- 4

I- 1

J- 7

K- 15

L- 7

M- 177

N- 17

O- 0

P- 9

Q- 2

R- 12

S- 5

T- 7

U- 11

V- 11

W- 111

X- 11

Y- 4

Z- 2





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