Telephone Directories

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell calls on his new invention “Mr Watson, come here, I want you” – The first telephone exchange is opened in Coleman Street in London. There are just seven subscribers – Launch of the first phone book.

1896 – The first national phone book is published listing 1,350 pages and 81,000 entries –The phone network is nationalised under the Post Office except Hull and Guernsey. By now, 560,000 subscribers – 1.5 million phone books printed annually. The nation’s largest printing contract.

1926 – The start of automatic exchanges and dial telephones with three-letter codes for exchanges – Over 2 million calls are made in UK and to overseas.

1966 – Three-letter codes are replaced by all numerals – Phone books have a new style combining business and classified lists with domestic ones.

Today 38% are ex-directory out of more than 23 million landlines. An estimated 14% of adults only use a mobile phone. Nevertheless, for over a century phone books were a key document for finding people, even though today ex- directory, mobiles, and ‘spam’ is bringing it to an end.

The content of phone books has remained remarkably consistent including names, address, telephone exchange and number since the earliest days. Some very early ones included occupation. All four can be searched on Ancestry. 1,780 directories from 1880 to 1984 can be accessed online at Ancestry ( 1025). 280 million names in England, Scotland and Wales and Ireland prior to 1922.

In the earliest years there had been several companies operating with the National Telephone Company emerging as largest in the mid-1890s beside the Post Office network. Hull Corporation bought the local service in 1914 and it remains the only non BT network on the mainland of Britain, now renamed as Kingston Communications.

Yellow Pages began in 1969 and a complete set is held at the Berkshire Record Office.

Owning a telephone was for many years a status symbol so an early listing might indicate significant wealth. It was largely a business tool in the early days but domestic lines were more common from the 1920s. By 1928 over a billion calls were made in one year. But even as late as 1972 only 40% of households had a telephone.

Only the head of household is usually listed, generally a male. As in directories, phone books often include local advertisements but you will not be able to search these via any index. Used with other resources telephone books can be an excellent research tool for the twentieth century.