First Telephone Book

Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent on his telephone in 1876. He demonstrated it to visitors to the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition that same year. In early 1878, he installed the first telephone exchange, in New Haven, Connecticut. The first telephone "book" - actually just a single 14 cm. x 21 cm. sheet - was issued in New Haven in 1878. Below is a 1978 facsimile of that sheet. To the right is the same text, suitable for computer searching.

By the way, a New Haven telephone book issued later in 1878, containing numerous pages and including advertisements, sold at auction in 2008 for $170,500. This was purportedly the first telephone book with more than one sheet of paper.