How big is your phone book??

[jymbee]

I remember once some years ago when we had relatives from "the city" visiting, there was an ad of some kind in the classified section of the local weekly newspaper that they were interested in and they wondered who had placed it. We offered to just look thorugh the phone book to find the number and name. They thought that was hilarious given that the phone books they had in their area were about 4 inches thick.

Quite a culture shock when they realized that not only was our local phone book about one half inch thick, and most of that was yellow pages and our town was but one of a half dozen other towns in the book-- and a smaller one at that! We found the number in less than 5 minutes as I recall...

Of course that was many years ago and these days our town's pages in the local phone book has exploded to (just counted) 24 pages!

I remember they were similarly fascinated with things like "party lines" as well. But hey, I doubt anyone here goes back *that* far. :laughing:

 

[turnkey4099]

I remember once some years ago when we had relatives from "the city" visiting, there was an ad of some kind in the classified section of the local weekly newspaper that they were interested in and they wondered who had placed it. We offered to just look thorugh the phone book to find the number and name. They thought that was hilarious given that the phone books they had in their area were about 4 inches thick.

Quite a culture shock when they realized that not only was our local phone book about one half inch thick, and most of that was yellow pages and our town was but one of a half dozen other towns in the book-- and a smaller one at that! We found the number in less than 5 minutes as I recall...

Of course that was many years ago and these days our town's pages in the local phone book has exploded to (just counted) 24 pages!

I remember they were similarly fascinated with things like "party lines" as well. But hey, I doubt anyone here goes back *that* far. :laughing:

Not only do I go back that far (and I had a "2 partiy line) as late as 1977, I go back to the days of crank phones and "central switchboards" in each town.

Harry K

 

[teejk]

I remember once some years ago when we had relatives from "the city" visiting, there was an ad of some kind in the classified section of the local weekly newspaper that they were interested in and they wondered who had placed it. We offered to just look thorugh the phone book to find the number and name. They thought that was hilarious given that the phone books they had in their area were about 4 inches thick.

Quite a culture shock when they realized that not only was our local phone book about one half inch thick, and most of that was yellow pages and our town was but one of a half dozen other towns in the book-- and a smaller one at that! We found the number in less than 5 minutes as I recall...

Of course that was many years ago and these days our town's pages in the local phone book has exploded to (just counted) 24 pages!

I remember they were similarly fascinated with things like "party lines" as well. But hey, I doubt anyone here goes back *that* far. :laughing:

what's a phone book?:laughing:

 

[jerrybob]

Not only do I go back that far (and I had a "2 partiy line) as late as 1977, I go back to the days of crank phones and "central switchboards" in each town.

Harry K

I remember my great, great grandfather talking about those types of phones!:laughing:

 

[bigtiller]

Not only do I go back that far (and I had a "2 partiy line) as late as 1977, I go back to the days of crank phones and "central switchboards" in each town.

Harry K

I remember the central switchboards. The operator wouldn't let my buddy and me talk for more than 2 minutes because she needed the line,,,, we were only 10 years old then. We move to the country shortly after that and had 3 or maybe 4 homes on our party line untill I graduated high school.

Our phone book has 156 pages and that includes the yellow pages and 49 towns.

 

[k0ua]

Phone book?.. Haven't used one in years. All you would ever possibly want in a phone book is right in front of you, or on your lap or in your hands. The local phone company sends us one, in April.. it goes in the trash will the rest of the junk mail for that day. I am sure in a few years, phone books will be in museums.
Years ago, we used them all the time.

James K0UA

 

[Trkrd]

Got 17 white pages and 54 yellow. About the size of a Readers digest.

 

[dave1949]

The book is just shy of a half-inch thick. Residential numbers take up 115 pages. It covers an area that would take about 2 hours north to south, and 1-1/4 hours east to west to drive. I have no clue how many people have only cell phones now. A lot of the area the book covers probably has poor cell phone coverage. But there could be more cell numbers than land line numbers, those aren't in the book.

Never had any crank phones or manual switchboards. Party line hogs and nosy neighbors, yes. :laughing:

 

[WM75Guy]

The Rhome (TX) Phone Company in 1977 had 400 customers and 3 employees. The book was pretty small. In Rhome and Decatur I always requested a party line as they were cheaper. Everybody else in town would request a private line so I was the only one on my line.

 

[jymbee]

Phone book?.. Haven't used one in years. All you would ever possibly want in a phone book is right in front of you, or on your lap or in your hands. The local phone company sends us one, in April.. it goes in the trash will the rest of the junk mail for that day. I am sure in a few years, phone books will be in museums.
Years ago, we used them all the time.

James K0UA

Point well taken-- and I'm the first to admit that I typically just tap a few keys to find info these days. However there's still a significant portion of the US population that is not "connected" and that do still use the phone book. A number of them who I know personally are friends and neighbors of mine.

Some interesting stats re. Internet usage here.