Phone Book turns 141 Today

An artifact today, in February 1878, a printed phone book was cutting-edge technology.

First published on this day 140 years ago, the telephone directory most consider to be the first phone book was a simple sheet of cardboard with the names of all 50 people and businesses who had a telephone in New Haven, Connecticut. It had no numbers.

That there were 50 people to call in New Haven, Connecticut in 1878 certainly had something to do with the fact the telephone was first demonstrated there by Alexander Graham Bell. He had invented it a little less than two years before while working at a school for the deaf nearby.

George Coy, who founded the New Haven telephone network, saw the Bell demonstration in April 1877. Employed by a local telegraph company, Coy invented the switchboard and turned that device and the franchise granted him by Bell into the world’s first telephone exchange. Before that, the first telephones were privately used on direct lines.

That the first phone book was only a list of names is not that odd. People resisted the idea of actually dialing a number themselves well into the twentieth century, preferring to speak to the switchboard operator and have that person direct their call.

Today, the phone book is obsolete, and some municipalities have even sought injunctions against the printing and distributing of the relics. Instead, we are linking with each other through the internet and social media and carry our connections on our mobile devices.

The old ways of connecting with have also become obsolete. Today, we want to connect with our ct with friends, family and colleagues in multitudes of digital formats. We want routine collaboration and some level of social sharing with transparency that creates trust and confidence.

Source: Smithsonian, Kat Eschner