Farewell Phone Book

[Clitheroekid]

I recently saw this piece about the last edition of The Phone Book being printed - https://www.printmonthly.co.uk/News/Ind ... phone-book

It made me realise just how long it is since I used one, and how things that used to be a staple part of everyday working life have just faded away without being noticed, rather like fax machines.

In some ways it was remarkable that so much data about people was readily available. It was certainly useful to me in tracing people that my clients wanted to sue, and I always retained old editions of Phone Books as they would often provide an address of a scoundrel who had subsequently decided it would be better to go ex-directory!

And I can remember the discussions that people used to have about whether going ex-directory was a good thing or not - although I opted out myself eventually there was always a perception that people who did were a bit snooty.

I think there used to be a feat of strength that involved tearing a Phone Book in half, though with the way they've shrunk over the last few years it wouldn't be very impressive nowadays.

[Tedx]

Phone books, yes. And as a youth, you could call the speaking clock for free. So we did that. And.....'I am Jack' . ' I see you've had no luck in catching me'

Chilling.

In my early working life, the pile of junk faxes on the floor on a Monday morning. Getting broadband at 0.5mb that was always on.

Freeserve. WiFi.

And so on.

[Gerry557]

All that time in the gym is paying off as I can rip a phone book in half. How I'm I going to test myself now

[bungeejumper]

In my early working life, the pile of junk faxes on the floor on a Monday morning. Getting broadband at 0.5mb that was always on.

Ha, said the four Yorkshiremen, broadband at 0.5mb was better than the 48K dial-up that we used to 'ave when we were young. There's a reason why we still keep pigeons up here, you know.

But yes, faxes were fun, except when they weren't. The machine in my home office used to drive me crazy, sending me misdirected faxes from Germany that should have gone to a large local factory. (And clogging up my landline in the process, and using reams of that expensive chemical paper that they used to use. )

You see, the factory's fax number was only one digit different from mine, and one of their German team hadn't got the memo. (Although I was cetainly getting his. ) I phoned the factory, I pleaded with them to sort it out, and nothing ever happened. Then, one day, I read one of the faxes, and it was about a multi-million pound product liability lawsuit against the company, and it was all highly classified information about how the company should approach the issue and set up its defence. Not at all the sort of information that ought to be passing into the hands of a member of the press, such as me.

Since my phone calls hadn't worked yet, I faxed the chief executive instead, and the rogue faxes stopped. I imagine somebody in Germany got his ears roasted. Oh, what I'd have given to be a fly on the wall.

BJ

[servodude]

In my early working life, the pile of junk faxes on the floor on a Monday morning. Getting broadband at 0.5mb that was always on.

Ha, said the four Yorkshiremen, broadband at 0.5mb was better than the 48K dial-up that we used to 'ave when we were young. There's a reason why we still keep pigeons up here, you know.

48k ?
Sheesh I'm way (way!) younger than most here and had to deal with 9k6 audio coupled modems at the start!

I lived through the conversion to digital storage such that I helped install computers in to offices that meant flimsy triplicates were replaced with printing out a doc three times!

[DrFfybes]

I recently saw this piece about the last edition of The Phone Book being printed - https://www.printmonthly.co.uk/News/Ind ... phone-book

It made me realise just how long it is since I used one,

I tore mine in half, just to see if I still could.

There is a technique to it

Paul

[Mike4]

The writing was obviously on the wall when they changed the name from "The Telephone Directory" to "The Phone Book".

About the same time as Microsoft joined in the dumbing down by calling directories on hard drives "folders", IIRC.

[UncleEbenezer]

In my early working life, the pile of junk faxes on the floor on a Monday morning. Getting broadband at 0.5mb that was always on.

Ha, said the four Yorkshiremen, broadband at 0.5mb was better than the 48K dial-up that we used to 'ave when we were young. There's a reason why we still keep pigeons up here, you know.
BJ

48K? Back in the 1980s when I first played with social media I had 1k down, 0.1k up. And that looked pretty good compared to the time in the '90s when it started to become a mass-market thing and congestion was everywhere!

[88V8]

I recently saw this piece about the last edition of The Phone Book being printed - https://www.printmonthly.co.uk/News/Ind ... phone-book

Ours arrived the other day. A pale shadow.
We're in it.
I put it on top of the kitchen cupbd to gather dust along with the previous somewhat thicker edition, plus the Thomson Local and the Yellow Pages.
I remember when one went into a red phone box and there was the four-volume phone directory. In those days I could read it without me specs.

V8

[DrFfybes]

I remember when one went into a red phone box and there was the four-volume phone directory. In those days I could read it without me specs.

Not a lot to do at night in the sticks?

[Lanark]

Looks like they are still selling 'Special Phone Book Entries'
https://www.thephonebook.bt.com/Advertise/SPBE/

Good old BT there has to be at least a 50% chance there will be another edition after the 'last' one.

[kiloran]

Ha, said the four Yorkshiremen, broadband at 0.5mb was better than the 48K dial-up that we used to 'ave when we were young. There's a reason why we still keep pigeons up here, you know.
BJ

48K? Back in the 1980s when I first played with social media I had 1k down, 0.1k up. And that looked pretty good compared to the time in the '90s when it started to become a mass-market thing and congestion was everywhere!

1k? Sheer luxury. I remember when we only had 300bps. And before that the bits arrived by carrier pigeon, except on sundays when they had the day off, or were victims of the weekend shooters.

--kiloran

[Niksen]

Fax machines - luxury.

Communication between the company offices when I started work was using a telex machine, where if you wanted to prepare the message to send later that involved punched tape.

[rabbit]

I tore mine in half, just to see if I still could.

Reminds me of a Dartmoor pub I used to visit in my youth, where a suitably torn up telephone directory, nailed to a piece of wood, served as toilet paper in the gents.

[bungeejumper]

Communication between the company offices when I started work was using a telex machine, where if you wanted to prepare the message to send later that involved punched tape.

Telex? Highfalutin' useless new-fangled techno-stuff that was never going to come to anything, except maybe for avoiding train crashes and the occasional arrest of a fugitive murderer on the high seas. Huh!

No, in my day it was all about semaphore. A much more important matter. As in "semaphore and sixpence, it's my round at the pub". Good clean carbon-neutral stuff, it was, and powered by renewable energy as well. Hell will freeze over before this here so-called Artificial Insemination business can ever signal an advancing fleet of Spanish galleons like we... [continued on page 94]

BJ

[the0ni0nking]

I think there used to be a feat of strength that involved tearing a Phone Book in half, though with the way they've shrunk over the last few years it wouldn't be very impressive nowadays.

I don't wish to question this, but I'm sure that test of strength was the Yellow Pages.

[GrahamPlatt]

48K? Back in the 1980s when I first played with social media I had 1k down, 0.1k up. And that looked pretty good compared to the time in the '90s when it started to become a mass-market thing and congestion was everywhere!

1k? Sheer luxury. I remember when we only had 300bps. And before that the bits arrived by carrier pigeon, except on sundays when they had the day off, or were victims of the weekend shooters.

--kiloran

I recall having 300/1200 baud modems when I started out. But they’d drop down to 75 baud if the line was poor.
My early days of playing with bulletin boards and Kermit.

[UncleEbenezer]

1k? Sheer luxury. I remember when we only had 300bps. And before that the bits arrived by carrier pigeon, except on sundays when they had the day off, or were victims of the weekend shooters.

--kiloran

I recall having 300/1200 baud modems when I started out. But they’d drop down to 75 baud if the line was poor.
My early days of playing with bulletin boards and Kermit.

If that's the same as me (seems likely) the modem was switchable. I had the choice of 1k down with 75baud up (which I used), or 300 baud symmetric. My 1k could be your 1200 if one of us is misremembering - as I might very well might be.

I remember Kermit (and Procomm) at work, but I used arcterm from home.

[Lootman]

I can remember the discussions that people used to have about whether going ex-directory was a good thing or not - although I opted out myself eventually there was always a perception that people who did were a bit snooty..

Didn't you have to pay to be ex-directory?

I never liked the idea of people being able to find my address and number that easily, and this was back before the current obsession with privacy and identity theft.

[scotia]

I recall having 300/1200 baud modems when I started out. But they’d drop down to 75 baud if the line was poor.
My early days of playing with bulletin boards and Kermit.

If that's the same as me (seems likely) the modem was switchable. I had the choice of 1k down with 75baud up (which I used), or 300 baud symmetric. My 1k could be your 1200 if one of us is misremembering - as I might very well might be.

I remember Kermit (and Procomm) at work, but I used arcterm from home.

I had a dial up link on a terminal to a remote computer using a BT (or was it called the PO in those days) 300/300 modem. Then I got an upgrade with a 600/600 modem which could be switched to work at 1200/75 (which I normally used). But the quality was generally poor - and I recollect being advised to call an operator and ask for a Modem grade link. Only the operator had no idea what a Modem grade link was. It was reasonably OK for character data from the computer, but awful for vector data to a graphics screen. Then along came EPSS - the experimental packet switching service, with error checking. And X25 followed soon after.
And yes, Kermit was an excellent tool, allowing data transmission to/from a range of computer operating systems.