How do I find old telephone directories?

How to Find Old Telephone Directories

  1. Check your local library. Check your local library to see if it houses old phone directories.
  2. Library of Congress.
  3. Call a phone company.
  4. Contact the Telecommunications History Group.
  5. Look online.

Can you look up old phone books?

The online site titled ‘Old Phone Book’ can take you back 20 years to 1994 and allows you to search across the United States for individuals who were listed in a phone book. Keep in mind the family or person you are search had to be listed in a phone book.

Are telephone directories still printed?

The provision of a free printed local area telephone directory to all households and businesses is set to be discontinued from next year. ComReg, the telecommunications regulator, has proposed that from 2019 a printed directory will only be made available to phone users who “opt in” for such a service.

Is there an online telephone book?

Phone books and white pages have gone the way of the rotary-dial telephone. But both still exist digitally online.

Is there a national cell phone directory?

Finding someone’s phone number online is tricky. Cell phone numbers are private—there’s no public directory of cell phone numbers to replace those old paper phone books.

What was missing from the first phone book?

The first telephone directory, consisting of a single piece of cardboard, was issued on 21 February 1878; it listed 50 individuals, businesses, and other offices in New Haven, Connecticut that had telephones. The directory was not alphabetized and no numbers were associated with the people included in it.

Do bt still do a phone book?

The BT Phone Book is the only remaining directory listing published in hard copy in the UK and is circulated to more than 21million homes every year. The Yellow Pages was one of the most popular phone books but its print edition ceased all publication in 2019 after five decades.

What replaced the phone book?

Local Search Marketing Statistics. A few years ago, ComScore found that more than half of the U.S. has replaced the phone book with an online search, and that number is growing as mobile usage skyrockets. According to MSN, 70% of Americans don’t even open their phone books. Only 11% use the white pages.

When did BT take over the telephone company?

The BT historical phone book collection includes phone books (‘lists of subscribers’) from some of the several telephone companies that were formed in the 1880s. By the mid 1890s these companies had either merged with or been taken over by the sole remaining private concern, the National Telephone Company (NTC), which ran the telephone service

How old are the old BT phone books?

BT is putting its entire archive of old phone books online for genealogists, or anyone else, to browse, and a commercial genealogy company is opening up access to all UK burial records since 1538. The phone books date back to 1880 and contain 280 million names.

How to find a person in the BT phone book?

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When was the first British phone book published?

This collection contains British phone books published between 1880, the year after the public telephone service was introduced to the UK, and 1984, from the historic phone book collection held by BT Archives.