The venerable phone number has been around, in some form or another, for over a century. Beginning as short two- or three-digit codes given orally to an operator or entered via turns of a wall telephone's crank, phone numbers have grown to lengthy proportions over a century of exploding growth in person-to-person calling. Today, dialing an old friend (or saving the "digits" of a new friend) in America means entering a string of numbers at least ten digits long. Depending on factors like region and international dialing code, numbers can be even longer. That's a lot of numerals to keep in a ...