Dial H: A History of the Telephone Directory

Since Alexander Graham Bell developed his design of the telephone and submitted his patent on 14 February 1876, the world of communication has been revolutionised and the lives of many across the globe have been transformed by Bell’s craftsmanship.

Bell, who was born in Scotland and also invented the gramophone, demonstrated the telephone to Queen Victoria in 1878. Part of his demonstration included making calls to London, Cowes and Southampton and these were the first long-distance calls ever made in the United Kingdom.

In the same year the Telephone Company Ltd (Bells Patents) was formed and Bell’s telephones were marketed within the UK. One of the first telephone lines to be erected in the vicinity of London was from Hay’s Wharf, south of the Thames, to Hay’s Wharf Office on the north bank. The next year (1879) saw the opening of the first public telephone exchange in Britain and the popularity literally snowballed from there.

In 1885 a through the night telephone service commenced for the first time and was used primarily to serve parliament and its members. The following year one of the first freestanding call offices, now known as a phone box, was introduced and members of the public could make a three-minute telephone call for ‘tuppence’, which equates to a little under 1p in today’s currency.

With Bell’s introduction of the telephone came a need for different telephone numbers and then of course a telephone directory which detailed these numbers. The first telephone directory in the UK was also issued by The Telephone Company Ltd on 15 January 1880, containing details of over 250 subscribers. To speak with another person you looked their name up in the directory and then called the operator, who would then connect your call as no numbers, only names, were listed. The popularity of the telephone quickly spread and by 1914, the telephone directory was the largest single printing contract in the country, running off 1.5 million copies.

In America the first telephone directory was published in 1878. A modest one page document it contained fifty names and as was the case in Britain, no numbers were listed. Within ten years the yellow pages directory had been introduced, albeit the name occurred by accident. An American printers ran out of the white paper that telephone directories were usually printed on and so used yellow instead, thus coining the term ‘yellow pages’. The yellow pages was designed to assist anyone who needed to find a business name or telephone number, which were all categorised by the type of product or service provided.

The yellow pages remains this way today and is still one of the most popular methods of locating business telephone numbers and information in most developed and developing countries across the world.

Disclaimer: Matthew Pressman writes for a wide variety of commercial clients. This article is intended for information purposes only and readers should seek additional information before taking any actions based on its content.