Comment on Phonebooks
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 6 hours agoNo joke! I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen a phone book. How would they even fit? Seems like they would have been enormous.
I did see a payphone in a restaurant once but it didn’t work. I saw another one outside of a gas station on a road trip in the south. That one had a dial tone, but I think you had to pay more to call anyone we knew, so we just took selfies pretending to use it.
Did the voice on the payphone say: You must please deposit 25 cents to place your call LOL I think that’s engrained in my memory
Fun fact:
Once touch tone phones became the norm there were actually games you could play by just calling a number. There was also a number you could call and get the local time and temperature. Oh, and lets not forget Mr. MoviePhone!
I don’t remember a voice, but maybe! I just remember the tone because we were excited that it worked. Someone came out of the gas station and saw us taking pictures and stuff and they told us that it’s there because until recently (and even still) cell coverage was really bad or nonexistent in the area, so a lot of people still used landlines.
One use for a phone book was to prop a little kid in a regular chair so they could eat at the table. Like, after they outgrew a baby highchair and could balance on their own. Also you could prove your strength by ripping one in half.
Listings were usually under the name of the adult male, for safety as well as sexism. A woman living alone would probably use just her initials for safety.
They were quite big, but used super thin paper and small font. There were books thicker still, but still the phrase “thick as a phone book” was used.
There were also Yellow Pages (same format as phone books, but entirely yellow) which listed businesess and stuff.
Pre-internet these were the household essentials.
The 1900s were crazy
Man, I was already feeling ancient. Ypu using “1900s” didn’t help much :D
I did that one on purpose as a joke! 😁
brygphilomena@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Residential listings were “white pages” and businesses were “yellow pages.”
Yes, they were big, printed on very thin paper, with small typeface.
Image
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
OMG 🤣🤣🤣
GildorInglorion@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Milton Hershey made chocolate, a town, and a school that inherited a controlling interest in the chocolate company.
GildorInglorion@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
And an amusement park
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Looked it up, that school seems very cool. It does sound like you’re describing Willy Wonka though.
Geekocracy@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
You are going to think I made this up, but the street lights are shaped like Hershey kisses.
WoahWoah@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Like in the town town or the amusement thing. Did this dude happen to enslave small-statured orange people by chance?
Geekocracy@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Wow! I grew up with these. (Nostalgia intensifies!)