Posted 8 years ago
sargeguy
(39 items)
Colorado Telephone Co. advertising ashtray made of stamped tin. The company was in business under that name from 1881 until it became part of the Mountain States Telephone Co. in 1911. Note the use of "phones" in quotes. This suggests that the word had only recently come into popular usage.
The 1800s saw the word telephone abbreviated to 'phone-- note the apostrophe. Not quote.
It persisted into the 1910s, and then they dropped the apostrophe.