Old phone books

[liteamorn]

In my trip down memory lane, in particular all things Telephony I began to think how cool it would be to find an old phone book from my youth.

I am a little surprised at how daunting this is becoming, I found one link (oldphonebooks or something like that)that when clicked on from a google search page starts a nasty malware program on my computer.

Surprisingly few on ebay so I was wondering if anyone here has scratched this particular itch and if so how?

[DavePEI]

In my trip down memory lane, in particular all things Telephony I began to think how cool it would be to find an old phone book from my youth.

I am a little surprised at how daunting this is becoming, I found one link (oldphonebooks or something like that)that when clicked on from a google search page starts a nasty malware program on my computer.

Surprisingly few on ebay so I was wondering if anyone here has scratched this particular itch and if so how?

I have been collecting old PEI phone books for years for the museum, and you are correct, it isn't easy.

I have been building what I hope some day will be a  full collection of Telephone Company of P.E.I., Island Tel and Aliant phone books for  years. I currently have the following books: Prince Edward Island Telephone System 1928, Prince Edward Island Telephone System 1929, Island Telephone Co., 1945 Island Telephone Co., 1958, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, and Island Tel 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and Aliant (PEI) 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. 2009, 2010, and 2011.

One place you might find interesting is Gwillim Law's site, http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com/ which pictures many of mine. I found mine locally, but forwarded photos of mine to him to use on his site - all the PEI books shown on his site are mine. Gwillim's site is absolutely safe - if you are getting other than a flawless report on it, it is a false trigger caused by a flaw in your antivirus program. It triggers none of the several antivirus programs I use on my various computers, Now, as you didn't include the full URL, the site you were at may not be Gwillim's, but his is one of the very best for book collectors.

Two nice examples, 1928 and 1945 shown below. The 1945 book was given me by the widow of D. D. McLeod, who ran a general store a mile from me, and which was the only place with a phone until the mid 50's where I live. The business closed down in the late 50s, but until then is where people for miles went to use the phone.

Dave

[jsowers]

To find one from your childhood, you'll have to stay local. My niece happened to find a 1963 phone book from my childhood and gave it to me for Christmas one year. It still has the CHestnut and REgent prefixes in it, but they were going away by that time. My phone number from childhood is in there. I was in kindergarten in 1963. It's amazing how small it is.

She found it at a local antique shop and candy store. That's where I would look if I were you--local antique and consignment shops. You could look for years on eBay and never find anything local to you. I only recall seeing one or two sellers local to me in over 10 years on eBay.

The 1945 book was given me by the widow of D. D. MacLeod, who ran a general store a mile from me, and which was the only place with a phone until the mid 50's where I live. The business closed down in the late 50s, but until then is where people for miles went to use the phone.

Dave, my grandparents ran a country store in Woodleaf, NC from the 1920s until 1952 and they were also the place where people went to use the phone for miles around. They would even take messages for people when the need arose. I wish I had a phone book from that era, if they even had them. My mother grew up in the store. Their ring was two longs. My grandparents built a house in 1953 next door and went from the magneto wall phone to a black 500 set that was in the house until 1991 when my grandmother died. For 20 years it sat in one of those niche things in the hallway.

[DavePEI]

[The 1945 book was given me by the widow of D. D. McLeod, who ran a general store a mile from me, and which was the only place with a phone until the mid 50's where I live. The business closed down in the late 50s, but until then is where people for miles went to use the phone.

By the way, if anyone wants to see the contents of a few early PEI directories, including some interesting "Instructions to Subscribers", I have transcriptions posted on my site:

1889/90 Telephone Directory - http://www.islandregister.com/phones/1889/1889book.html
1928 Telephone Directory - http://www.islandregister.com/phones/1928/1928book.html
1922 Telephone Directory - http://www.islandregister.com/phones/1922/1922book.html
1935 Telephone Directory - http://www.islandregister.com/phones/1935/1935book.html

Also another interesting PEI document, a letter sent out to it's subsribers one moth after the 1956 Ice Storm which wiped out 2/3 of the Island's telephone infrastructure and cut off power to the effected areas as well for months to come:
http://www.islandregister.com/phones/icestorm.html

Following this experience, while trunk lines remained arial, local lines were quickly switched from arial to buried throughout the countryside, and the Island's microwave program was accelerated due to the success of the success of microwave links during the outage. PEI had pioneered in the first commercial microwave system in the world between Tea Hill near Charlottetown and Fraser's Mountain near New Glasgow [N.S.] using pulse time modulation equipment in 1948. It remained fully operational durring the outage affecting 2/3 of the province. Prior to that, military and non-commercial microwave was in use and development elsewhere, but not commercial.

Just a bit of information on how a little telephone company and a storm  made a big difference!

Dave

[teka-bb]

This may be of interest when interested in old phone books:

http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com/pbmain.html

[DavePEI]

This may be of interest when interested in old phone books:

http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com/pbmain.html

Yes, that's Gwillim Law's site which I pointed out above. I have photos of most of my PEI books posted on his site...

Dave

[Greg G.]

I haven't really sought them out, but I became more interested after I happened to find a 1941 Seattle phone book in an antique store that had my paternal grandparents listed.  I would only really be interested in one if it had some personal connection like that.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5619.0

[DavePEI]

I haven't really sought them out, but I became more interested after I  happened to find a 1941 Seattle phone book in an antique store that had my paternal grandparents listed.  I would only really be interested in one if it had some personal connection like that.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5619.0

That is why so many of the museum visitors love the books. My other web site is a PEI genealogy site, and a large number of the museum visitors are attracted due to the genealogy and history. All with family links enjoy looking through the books for the reasons you state.

Dave

[Greg G.]

I haven't really sought them out, but I became more interested after I  happened to find a 1941 Seattle phone book in an antique store that had my paternal grandparents listed.  I would only really be interested in one if it had some personal connection like that.

http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=5619.0

That is why so many of the museum visitors love the books. My other web site is a PEI genealogy site, and a large number of the museum visitors are attracted due to the genealogy and history. All with family links enjoy looking through the books for the reasons you state.

Dave

Come to think of it, I didn't look to see if my maternal line was listed.  My Mom's folks were dead by then, but my Dad's aunts and uncles on his Mom's side might be in there.

[teka-bb]

I have a large collection of phone books, all Dutch besides one American one with the famous cover.
My oldest Dutch one is from 1896, from the city of Rotterdam.

[GG]

Dave, given the list of 38 party line codes in the 1935 directory, does that mean there were party lines with as many as 38 subscribers on one line? 

--

One of the things you'll see in old directories is that telephone numbers have variable length: for example "Village Pharmacy, call 34; if no answer call 4456" and "Dora's Dress Shop, call 102."  This was due to manual switchboards being numbered from 1 to whatever.  Typically the single-digit numbers were the first ones installed, and would include police, fire, and city hall.  The position of these line jacks on the switchboard made them easier for operators to find in an emergency.

Only the introduction of automatic (dial) service brought some uniformity to the numbering plan, due to the electrical design of the switching systems: in a Strowger system it was always necessary to progress through the selectors and connector, a finite and uniform number of steps.

[Signguy]

PEI phone books.

Interesting to see how few of my relatives and friends had phones in the Tignish exchange in 1935. In the late 40's and into the 1950's ( I was born in 1937) a lot of folks had phones but not all. I was told that to be in Frank Sheas general store  in St Louis when the phone rang was pretty exciting. My grand parents at Skinners Pond would have to go to Franks store and use the phone if they had to get in touch with anyone in an emergency.

When the Ellsworths finally did get a phone I can remember so many people picked up when the phone rang you had to ask folks to please hang up so you could hear. Of course that was the internet of the day.

Cheers..... Ell

[DavePEI]

PEI phone books.
Interesting to see how few of my relatives and friends had phones in the Tignish exchange in 1935. In the late 40's and into the 1950's ( I was born in 1937) a lot of folks had phones but not all. I was told that to be in Frank Sheas general store  in St Louis when the phone rang was pretty exciting. My grand parents at Skinners Pond would have to go to Franks store and use the phone if they had to get in touch with anyone in an emergency.

When the Ellsworths finally did get a phone I can remember so many people picked up when the phone rang you had to ask folks to please hang up so you could hear. Of course that was the internet of the day.

Cheers..... Ell

Hi Ell:

Yes, the old country stores were an interesting place. Though I was very young when our local store (where that directory came from) was open, I do remember it fairly well. We lived in Ontario then, but each year as we came down to the Island for the summer, the first thing we saw was that store, and its two glass bottle gas tanks as we came down the hill, as the store was located directly opposite the intersection, where we turned right to head here. Its entrance was exactly one mile from our driveway.

The store was the hub of the community. I did figure out exactly what year the phone was put in (1934), but even before then, the store was a meeting place for the residents, a place to catch up with the latest gossip and news of the community. You could buy anything from nuts and bolts to coveralls there, plus, of course groceries. The front porch was always filled with local residents catching up with the news. When the phone came, it only added another dimension to that, people going there to make and receive phone calls, and those leaving the store would let other area people know if there had been a call for them.

That phone remained the only one in the community until 1955.

I remember the party lines well, as we still had them until 1997, and through the preceding years, the number of people on each line was gradually dropped from 8 to 2 people per line, as Island Tel installed new lines. The final change to private line was in 1997, when finally there were enough lines to provide all with private lines, and the surcharge for private lines was dropped. Magneto lines were the norm until 1967, when we finally got automatic dialing. The final exchange to go automatic was Tyne Valley, which final got automatic dialing in December 1977. I have the NE 1240 switchboard from Tyne Valley in the museum, operational with my collection of magneto phones.

I have some interesting party line stories on: http://www.islandregister.com/phones/partyline.html

Some time in the 70's, the open wire was finally replaced with buried cable on our road, though much of the Island was done soon after the 1956 ice storm. The main trunks remained on the highway arial, so they could be serviced easily, but most side roads were changed over to buried lines.

Incidentally, Tignish was one of the areas on the Island very severely affected by the 1956 ice storm. It was several months before telephone and electrical service was fully restored there despite help from Island Tel, MT&T, and NB Tel employees, and additional help from the army and emergency communication provide by both the army and local Ham radio operators.

Yes, the books can be very interesting from a genealogical and historical standpoint!

Dave

[Signguy]

...Incidentally, Tignish was one of the areas on the Island very severely affected by the 1956 ice storm. It was several months before telephone and electrical service was fully restored there despite help from Island Tel, MT&T, and NB Tel employees, and additional help from the army and emergency communication provide by both the army and local Ham radio operators....

Hi Dave
In 1956 not everyone had electricity on the North Cape. Before 1950 outlying farms still were not electrified completely. To me the biggest advance was indoor plumbing becoming available in later years. AND finally the paving of Lady Slipper Dr/highway. Multi party telephone did not seem to be much of an inconvience at the time.

The ice storm was followed a couple of years latter (winter of 58 or 59) of some of the worst snows on record. I was in the Army at the time, stationed in Germany,  when my Grandmother sent me pics of the mail being delivered by the snowplows.

Cheers.... Ell

[DavePEI]

In 1956 not everyone had electricity on the North Cape. Before 1950 outlying farms still were not electrified completely. To me the biggest advance was indoor plumbing becoming available in later years. AND finally the paving of Lady Slipper Dr/highway. Multi party telephone did not seem to be much of an inconvience at the time.

Hi Ell:

Yes, but I am talking about the  town of Tignish itself which did have electricity then. Outlying areas didn't for sure. All lines west, including telephone and electrical were taken down by the storm. Even here, we didn't have electricity run down the road until 1956... I still remember the gas powered washing machine and pump, and in 1955 we had the house wired, and played with the non-functional switches until the following year.... Those were the days where kerosene lanterns came in useful. I still have a few of those lamps, most notably, a metal hurricane lamp!

We did have indoor plumbing prior to that, thanks to a gas powered pump and hot water heated by our Enterprise range. When the water pressure got down, someone had to run out to the porch, and kick start the pump motor. Needless to say, there was a huge galvanized tank storing the water! Once the power came through, Mom and Dad didn't waste any time getting an electric pump.

Incidentally, the high snow years, the local mail delivery here reverted to horse and sleigh. Somewhere I have seen photo from those years, where the kids here stood on the snow banks and were literally above the open wire. Of course, back then, lines were lower than nowadays. While we had returned to Ontario for the winter, our next door neighbours left their house via their upstairs windows. Dozers were used to try to keep the roads clear.

Sometime around 1962, the road was finally paved. I still remember it rained while they paved, and we went out to the road, and skated in our bare feet on the fresh, steaming pavement. Not a lot of traffic in those days!

Dave