I was talking to a coworker about these new phishing attacks that send your name and address and sometimes a picture of your house, and I was saying how creepy it is, and they told me that phonebooks were delivered to everyone and used to have like literally everyone in a city listed by last name with their phone number and address. Is that for real?
Yes. I live in a larger metropolitan area and there were both white and yellow (business) page editions that were 2 1/2 inches thick each.
I’m probably misremembering, but I swear our phonebook was at least 5 inches thick. We used collect the neighbors because they didn’t want them, and then me and my friends would stack them in the club house we chairs.
I’m amazed they were even that thin. It seems like they’d have to be huge.
You also need to keep in mind that there were not nearly as many phone numbers back then. While today a family of 4 might have a cell phone for each person (especially by the time the kids are teenagers), in the 20th century most families just had one number for the whole household (and the earlier you go there might have even been just one actual phone in the house).
Very small font on very thin paper.
Yeah it felt like the Bible and the white/yellow pages used the thinnest paper I’d ever seen