1934 Phone Directory~How to use a rotary dial phone~Good Luck!

Having trouble learning the ins & outs of your new Smart Phone? Your gram & gramps suffered the same kind of learning curve for the new-fangled rotary dialers too, as this 2-page spread from a 1934 directory shows. Party lines and no operator to assist automatically must have made for many many 'wrong numbers' at the beginning - especially if you were trying to call your next-door neighbor on that party line.

And did you know that, in the very early days of telephones, customers did NOT have exclusive ownership to a phone number? 'Your' number could be changed by the phone co. at their discretion depending on the demands of their primitive systems at the time. Oh, the horror!