List of Subscribers to the Portland Telephone Exchange. Central Office: 24 Exchange Street. Diagram of Portland Theatre, Fire Alarm Numbers, Calendar for 1880

Published by Dresser, McLellan & Co., Booksellers, Portland [Maine], 1880

About this Item

First edition. 16mo. 16pp. Stitched printed buff wrappers. Modest age-toning on wrappers, faint crease in top corner of front wrap, a couple of tiny pencil tic marks, a few lines lightly underlined in pencil, else about fine. Gives a brief history of the Exchange, noting it was started in September of 1879 with an initial group of 105 subscribers. This pamphlet provides a list of all subscribers in the city, which then numbered 170 (in a city of then about 34,000 people), all but a handful of them businesses or public buildings and offices. Less than 20 private homes are listed. Curiously, the bookseller who published this is listed as having a phone. A very early listing of phone subscribers. The first phone "book" was published in 1878 (a single sheet broadside list of subscribers) in New Haven, Connecticut. The Portland Exchange also issued a single leaf broadside of subscribers when they commenced business on September 1, 1879 (not located by *OCLC*). *OCLC* locates no copies of this List of Subscribers, and only about a half dozen of any lists from 1880 or before, mostly known in single copies. Rare.

Seller Inventory # 461706

Bibliographic Details

• Title: List of Subscribers to the Portland Telephone Exchange. Central Office: 24 Exchange Street. Diagram of Portland Theatre, Fire Alarm Numbers, Calendar for 1880
• Publisher: Dresser, McLellan & Co., Booksellers, Portland [Maine]
• Publication Date: 1880
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine