World's First Telephone Book Surfaces [Telecom]

World's First Telephone Book Surfaces By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

May 29, 2008 -- The only known edition of the world's first telephone book has just surfaced in Connecticut.

It will be auctioned along with a collection of noteworthy books and documents covering technology, science, math and philosophy over six centuries.

The 20-page directory was issued in November of 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. The phone book contained information useful to 391 subscribers within the New Haven, Conn., area who were obviously still learning their way around the new communication device.

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Neal McLain
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Some telephone histories have a copy of a page from the NYC telephone book to show the 3L-4n dialing arrangement. I've tried matching that up with a current phone book but found no matches.

Some time ago, we compared random pages of a 1959 Phila white pages against a current version. To my surprise there were far more matches than I expected (same name, phone number, address). A number of names and addresses were the same but with a different number. For some unusual ethnic names, we could see movement in the city, that is, we'd see "John Kaputnick" in an old neighborhood and then "Mrs. J Kaputnick" in a newer neighborhood in an apt, obviously the widow who had moved on. (Typical of that particular ethnicity and neighborhood).

To my surprise, we didn't find many matching business listings. Small businesses either didn't exist, changed their name, or had moved. Many large businesses, such as department stores or banks, had changed or were bought out over the years.

from competition from large chains, sometimes after the parents retired and the kids didn't want to take over the business. The parents had to work very hard in those small businesses and many wanted better for their kids; they sent them to college so as to not have to work so hard.

Reply to
hancock4

212-736-5000

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

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