WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
FIRST TELEPHONE DIRECTORY
Profile America — Sunday, February 21st. In the early days of the telephone, knowing who had one and what the number was quickly became a problem. The first telephone directory in the U.S. was published on this date in 1878 in New Haven, Connecticut. It wasn't a big list — there were only 50 subscribers. A little later, a directory also came out in San Francisco, with about 170 names. Today, of America's roughly 117 million housing units occupied by owners or renters, over 114 million, or about 98 percent, have cellular or landline telephone service. Eleven firms issue directories for the nation's millions of listed personal and business phone numbers. Manufacturing telephones and associated equipment is a $7.4 billion a year domestic business. You can find more statistics on communities across the country by downloading the Census Bureau's "dwellr" mobile application at www.census.gov/mobile.
Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 1818
San Francisco directory/accessed 12/10/2015: http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/hgtel.htm
Households and phone service: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_14_1YR_DP04&prodType=table
Telephone directory publishing/accessed 12/10/2015: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Telephone_directory_publishing_companies_of_the_United_States
Phone numbers/p. 12, t. 1/accessed 12/10/2015: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-319997A1.pdf
Manufacturing/NAICS 334210: http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ASM_2013_31VS101&prodType=table
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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