1878 : Michigan’s First Telephone Directory Published

On Sept. 15, 1878, Michigan’s first phone book was published.

It was titled “List of Subscribers,” and listed 124 customers in Detroit.

The earliest phone book is actually dated to February 21, 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut, published on a single piece of cardboard. There were fifty listings, and it didn’t have any numbers. It listed the names of the businesses that had a telephone.

Sources :

Michigan Every Day

For more information, see Jason Zasky, The Phone Book, Failure Magazine.

The phone book : the curious history of the book that everyone uses but no one reads / Ammon Shea. New York : Perigee Book, 2010 available through interlibrary loan.