Berlin's first telephone book was published exactly 125 years ago, on July 14 1881, about six months after the introduction of the first telephones. It contained just 28 pages and 187 listings - the modern version runs to two thick volumes of about 1500 densely printed pages each. Back then the Stock Exchange (Börse) had bagged the very easy to remember telehpone number "1".

If you want to take a trip down Berlin's telecommunicative memory lane, the publisher Berlin Story Verlag has reprinted the original as Das erste Berliner Telefonbuch 1881 (German only).

If you want to know more about Berlin's communication history, check out the Museum for Communication Berlin.

Posted at 8:32 AM in