(It’s harder than tearing an apple but probably easier than rolling up frying pans.) A fat Yellow Book is also perfect for punking dorm mates- this video by Tufts students has achieved phone-book infamy-or just for pummeling them.

The phone book’s most fervent users these days are the cult of young YouTubers who, left with piles of directories that only their parents and professors could want, demonstrate the old parlor trick of ripping a phone book in half. ( Stanley Meltzoff’s illustration of American archetypes playing “telephone” will induce the shock of long-forgotten memory in anyone over 35.) But, above all, phone books were the sine qua non of small-business advertising and such an unstoppable gusher of profit that by the time industry pioneer Reuben Donnelly died in 1929, he’d already built up a $10 million personal estate.Īnd from that desperation comes … inspiration. When AT&T gave all 2,400 local editions the same bicentennial-commemorative cover, the resulting run of 187 million copies probably became the most-reproduced book cover of all time. The humble phone book spent the 20 th century as the prince of print jobs. Within five years, it rose sixfold again and required a corps of 500 deliverymen, more than 500 rail-car loads of paper, and 100 tons of binding glue. From there, directories went viral: The print run for the Manhattan directory alone passed the million mark in 1921. We’re a long way from 1878, when New Haven phone subscribers received a single-sided sheet with all of 11 residences and 39 businesses on it.

Dex online white pages portland oregon