The Rise and Fall of the Phone Book

The first use of the word “hello” goes back to 1827, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.  It was not used to greet people, but to attract their attention.  Examples would be “Hello, stand up straight” or “Hello, look at that.”

The usage of the word “hello” changed after the telephone was invented.  There was disagreement between Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell about how phone conversations should begin.  Edison thought people should begin a conversation with “hello.”  Alexander Graham Bell thought “ahoy” would be better.  “Ahoy” was an older word that Bell felt strongly about and used for the rest of his life when beginning a phone conversation.

“Hello” succeeded, people say, because of the phone book.  In the first days of the telephone, people referred to written instructions to help them figure out how to use the phone properly.  In the first phone book published in 1878 in Connecticut, users were advised to use “Hello” when beginning a conversation and “That is all” when ending one.

The first phone book contained only the names of fifty people and businesses having access to a telephone.  There were no phone numbers or addresses on the card since the telephone operators knew how to connect people with each other.  The directory, or “phone book,” was actually just a piece of cardboard.

Individual telephones were identified with numbers because of an outbreak of measles in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1879.  The fear was that the four operators would get sick and not be able to connect people with each other or to a doctor.  It was Dr. Moses Parker who suggested the use of assigned numbers.  Lowell, Massachusetts, then, became the first city in the U.S. with individual phone numbers.

The first yellow pages phone book was published in 1886  for businesses in Chicago.  Almost a hundred years later in 1981, the first electronic phone book was created in France.  Online phone directories didn’t become available in the U.S. until 1996 with the advent of Yellowpages.com and Whitepages.com.

By the beginning of the 21st century, printed phone books were on the wane.  Many people saw them as a waste of paper and resources, and they required space to store.  The computer and the smartphone were reducing the need for a printed phone directory.  Gradually, the printed phone book exited the scene in most cities of size in the U.S.

So there you have it – a short history of the phone book. “That is all.”