Telephone directory

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A "white pages" telephone directory Telefonbog ubt-1.JPG
A "white pages" telephone directory

A telephone directory, commonly called a telephone book, telephone address book, phonebook, or the white and yellow pages, is a listing of telephone subscribers in a geographical area or subscribers to services provided by the organization that publishes the directory. Its purpose is to allow the telephone number of a subscriber identified by name and address to be found.

Contents

The advent of the Internet, search engines, and smartphones in the 21st century greatly reduced the need for a paper phone book. [1] [2] Some communities, such as Seattle and San Francisco, sought to ban their unsolicited distribution as wasteful, unwanted and harmful to the environment. [3] [4]

The slogan "Let Your Fingers Do the Walking" refers to use of phone books. [1]

"Always Be Sure of the Number" - 1916 advertisement Always Be Sure of the Number - Wisconsin Telephone Company ad, 1916.png
"Always Be Sure of the Number" - 1916 advertisement

Content

Subscriber names are generally listed in alphabetical order, together with their postal or street address and telephone number. In principle every subscriber in the geographical coverage area is listed, but subscribers may request the exclusion of their number from the directory, often for a fee; their number is then said to be "unlisted" (US and Canada), "ex-directory" (British English), or "private" (Australia and New Zealand). [5]

A telephone directory may also provide instructions: how to use the telephone service, how to dial a particular number, be it local or international, what numbers to access important and emergency services, utilities, hospitals, doctors, and organizations who can provide support in times of crisis. It may also have civil defense, emergency management, or first aid information. There may be transit maps, postal code/zip code guides, international dialing codes or stadium seating charts, as well as advertising.

In the US, under current rules and practices, mobile phone and voice over IP listings are not included in telephone directories. Efforts to create cellular directories have met stiff opposition from several fronts, including those who seek to avoid telemarketers.[ citation needed ]

Types

A telephone directory and its content may be known by the colour of the paper it is printed on.

Other colors may have other meanings; for example, information on government agencies is often printed on blue pages or green pages.[ citation needed ]

Publication

Telephone directories can be published in hard copy or in electronic form. In the latter case, the directory can be on physical media such as CD-ROM, [6] or using an online service through proprietary terminals or over the Internet. [7] [8]

In many countries, directories are both published in book form and also available over the Internet. Printed directories were usually supplied free of charge.

CD ROM

Selectphone (ProCD) Inc.) [9] and PhoneDisc (Digital Directory Assistance Inc) were among the earliest such products. These were not a matter of a single click: PhoneDisc, depending on the mix of Residential, Business or both, involved up to eight CD-ROMs. [7] SelectPhone is fewer CD-ROMs: five. [9]

Both provide a reverse lookup feature (by phone number or by address), albeit involving up to five CD-ROMs. [8] [9]

Internet

The combination of phone number lookups, along with Internet access, was offered by some service providers; VoIP (Voice over IP) was an additional feature. [10] [11]

History

The first telephone directory, printed in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, in November 1878 New haven directory 1878.jpg
The first telephone directory, printed in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, in November 1878

Telephone directories are a type of city directory. Books listing the inhabitants of an entire city were widely published starting in the 18th century, before the invention of the telephone.

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. [12] The directory was not alphabetized and no numbers were included with the people listed in it. [13] In 1879, Dr. Moses Greeley Parker suggested the format of the telephone directory be changed so that subscribers appeared in alphabetical order and each telephone be identified with a number. Parker came to this idea out of fear that Lowell, Massachusetts's four operators would contract measles and be unable to connect telephone subscribers to one another. [13]

The first British telephone directory was published on 15 January 1880 by The Telephone Company. It contained 248 names and addresses of individuals and businesses in London; telephone numbers were not used at the time as subscribers were asked for by name at the exchange. [14] The directory is preserved as part of the British phone book collection by BT Archives.

The Reuben H. Donnelly company asserts [15] that it published the first classified directory, or yellow pages, for Chicago, Illinois, in 1886.

In 1938, AT&T commissioned the creation of a new typeface, known as Bell Gothic, the purpose of which was to be readable at very small font sizes when printed on newsprint where small imperfections were common.[ citation needed ]

In 1981, France became the first country to have an electronic directory on a system called Minitel. [16] The directory is called "11" after its telephone access number.

In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Feist v. Rural ) that telephone companies do not have a copyright on telephone listings, because copyright protects creativity and not the mere labor of collecting existing information. [17]

A bundle of phone books in the trash, unopened Unused Phonebooks.JPG
A bundle of phone books in the trash, unopened

In late July 1995 Kapitol launched the Infobel.be website. [18] [19] Infobel was then the first telephone directory website launched on the then-nascent Internet. In 1996, in the US the first telephone directories went online. Yellowpages.com and Whitepages.com both saw their start in April. [20] In 1999, the first online telephone directories and people-finding sites such as LookupUK.com went online in the UK. In 2003, more advanced UK searching including Electoral Roll became available on LocateFirst.com.

With online directories, and with many people giving up landlines for cell phones whose numbers are not listed in telephone directories, printed directories are no longer as necessary as they once were. Regulators no longer required that residential listings be printed, starting with New York in 2010. Yellow pages continued to be printed because some advertisers still reached consumers that way. [21]

In the 21st century, printed telephone directories are increasingly criticized as waste. In 2012, after some North American cities passed laws banning the distribution of telephone books, an industry group sued and obtained a court ruling permitting the distribution to continue. [3] In 2010, manufacture and distribution of telephone directories produced over 1,400,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases and consumed over 600,000 tons of paper annually. [22]

Reverse directories

A reverse telephone directory is sorted by phone number, so the name and address of a subscriber is looked up by phone number. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reference work</span> Publication to which one can refer for confirmed facts

A reference work is a work, such as a paper, book or periodical, to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually referred to for particular pieces of information, rather than read beginning to end. The writing style used in these works is informative; the authors avoid opinions and the use of the first person, and emphasize facts.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, refers to a set of technologies used for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as data packets, facilitating various methods of voice communication, including traditional applications like Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Voice, and VoIP phones. Regular telephones can also be used for VoIP by connecting them to the Internet via analog telephone adapters (ATAs), which convert traditional telephone signals into digital data packets that can be transmitted over IP networks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">North American Numbering Plan</span> Integrated telephone numbering plan of twenty North American countries

The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the telephone country code 1. Some North American countries, most notably Mexico, do not participate with the NANP.

A voicemail system is a computer-based system that allows callers to leave a recorded message when the recipient has been unable or unwilling to answer the phone. Calls may be diverted to voicemail manually or automatically. The caller is prompted to leave a message and the recipient can retrieve the message at a later time.

Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematically organized by the E.164 standard, while the Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) for linking domain names to IP addresses and other resource information. Telephone number mapping systems provide facilities to determine applicable Internet communications servers responsible for servicing a given telephone number using DNS queries.

411 is a telephone number for local directory assistance in Canada and the United States. Until the early 1980s, 411 – and the related 113 number – were free to call in most jurisdictions.

The telephone number prefix 555 is a central office code in the North American Numbering Plan, used as the leading part of a group of 10,000 telephone numbers, 555-...., in each numbering plan area (NPA). It has traditionally been used only for the provision of directory assistance, when dialing NPA-555-1212.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yellow pages</span> Telephone directory of businesses by category

The yellow pages are telephone directories of businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings. The traditional term "yellow pages" is now also applied to online directories of businesses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone numbers in France</span>

The French telephone numbering plan is used in Metropolitan France, French overseas departments and some overseas collectivities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caller ID spoofing</span> Phone caller faking the phone number sent to the recipient of a phone call

Caller ID spoofing is a spoofing attack which causes the telephone network's Caller ID to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. This can lead to a display showing a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DEX One</span> American yellow pages and marketing company

Dex One Corporation was an American marketing company providing online, mobile and print search marketing via their DexKnows.com website, print yellow pages directories and pay-per-click ad networks in the U.S.

A reverse telephone directory is a collection of telephone numbers and associated customer details. However, unlike a standard telephone directory, where the user uses customer's details in order to retrieve the telephone number of that person or business, a reverse telephone directory allows users to search by a telephone service number in order to retrieve the customer details for that service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the telephone</span>

This history of the telephone chronicles the development of the electrical telephone, and includes a brief overview of its predecessors. The first telephone patent was granted to Alexander Graham Bell in 1876.

Electronic Yellow Pages are online versions of traditional printed business directories produced by telephone companies around the world. Typical functionalities of online yellow pages include the alphabetical listings of businesses and search functionality of the business database by name, business or location. Since Electronic Yellow Pages are not limited by space considerations, they often contain far more comprehensive business information such as vicinity maps, company profiles, product information, and more.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telephone number</span> Sequence of digits assigned to a telephone subscription

A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices for data transmission via the public switched telephone network (PSTN), or other public and private networks. Modern smart phones have added a built-in layer of abstraction whereby individuals or businesses are saved into a contacts application and the numbers no longer have to be written down or memorized.

The white pages is a listing of telephone subscribers in a telephone directory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitepages (company)</span> US directory services company

Whitepages is a provider of online directory services, fraud screening, background checks and identity verification for consumers and businesses. It has the largest database available of contact information on residents of the United States.

YellowPagesDirectory.com is a national online telephone number and street address directory, containing Yellow Pages and White Pages throughout the United States. Formerly known as YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, YellowPagesDirectory.com is owned and operated by Yellow Pages Directory Inc., which is headquartered in Manhattan, NY. The website was originally launched in 2010 by a private owner and was soon acquired by Yellow Pages Directory Inc. In addition to telephone and street address listings, the website also has informational blog articles, in addition to being outspoken advocates of opting-out of traditional print telephone directory home delivery.

Infobel is a Brussels, Belgium-based online international telephone directory. Launched in 1995 by Kapitol SA, Infobel was the first online telephone directory. As of 2014, Infobel had a database that contained over 140 million telephone numbers.

White Pages Australia is a formerly government-owned and now-privatised directory of contact information for people and business entities within Australia. Originally only in the form of a print book delivered to all households for several decades, it now also exists online.

References

  1. 1 2 "Phone books used as truck fuel in Fla". New York Post . 15 June 1992. p. 9.
  2. ↑ By 1992 one phone company, which had collected 58,000 tons of old phone books, recycled them by converting them to fuel for some of their trucks.
  3. 1 2 Yellow Pages ruling endangers SF ban, Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle , 15 October 2012; retrieved 19 March 2013
  4. ↑ Appeals court rules against Seattle's curbs on yellow pages, Emily Heffter, Seattle Times , 15 October 2012; retrieved 19 March 2013
  5. ↑ "How to get a non-published Bell Home phone number". Support.bell.ca. 17 June 2013. Retrieved 16 April 2014.
  6. ↑ Ron White (July 1996). "Directory Assistance on Disc". PC Computing . p. 76. three main .. American Business Information, PhoneDisc, Select Phone
  7. 1 2 Mart Katz (29 April 1997). "New Telephone-List CD-ROM Extends Its Reach to the Internet". The New York Times . Retrieved 20 September 2022.
  8. 1 2 L. R. Shannon (23 August 1994). "Directory Assistance For the U.S. On a Disk". The New York Times . Retrieved 20 September 2022.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Peter H. Lewis (13 December 1994). "CD-ROM Review; Disks for Mac: Voyager Still Leads". The New York Times . Retrieved 20 September 2022.
  10. ↑ Thomas J. Fitzgerald (3 March 2005). "Your Options When Calling or Receiving Just Got Wider". The New York Times .
  11. ↑ Find Medical Centres, 30 April 2023
  12. ↑ Jason Zasky. "The Phone Book". Failure Magazine. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 31 December 2013.
  13. 1 2 Gleick, James (2012). The information : a history, a theory, a flood (1st Vintage books ed., 2012 ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN   978-1-4000-9623-7. OCLC   745979816.
  14. ↑ Records of the Telephone Company Limited (Bell's Patents), BT Archives reference TPA
  15. ↑ "Yellow Pages Industry – The Untold Story". 13 July 2012. Archived from the original on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 4 September 2020.
  16. ↑ "Telephone History in France by". Whitepages.fr. Retrieved 16 April 2014.
  17. ↑ Steven W. Colford (1 April 1991). "Data-base ruling: No copyright for white-pages lists". Advertising Age . p. 36.
  18. ↑ Alain Jennotte and Roger Milutin (29 September 2000). "ENTREPRISES Infobel jongle avec les banques de données du web En cinq ans, elle est devenue un leader européen des annuaires électroniques Du contenu sur mesure pour Yahoo! et consorts" (in French). Le Sior. Retrieved 5 December 2014.
  19. ↑ Mathieu van Overstraeten (3 May 2002). "Ils sont dans l'annuaire". La Libre (in French). Retrieved 5 December 2014.
  20. ↑ Telephone Directory History by Whitepages.fr
  21. ↑ Mansfield, Karen (7 January 2023). "The end of an era: Whatever happened to the phone book?". Observer–Reporter . Retrieved 11 August 2024.
  22. ↑ Paster, Pablo (11 January 2010). "Ask Pablo: What Is The Impact of All Those Unwanted Phone Books?". TreeHugger. Retrieved 16 April 2014.

Further reading

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