Civil War veteran George Coy was the manager of a telegraph office in New Haven, Connecticut, when he attended a demonstration of the telephone by inventor Alexander Graham Bell in April 1877. This led to Coy's establishing the world's first public telephone exchange on January 28, 1878. Three weeks later Coy made another first, by publishing the world's first telephone directory, a one-page list of 50 subscribers in New Haven. This is the story of that first directory, a point of pride for the state of Connecticut.
Resources:
Southern New England Telephone Company Records finding aid
Selected photographs and documents from the Southern New England Telephone Company Records
Letters from George Coy to a newspaper writer, written in 1910 and 1911, about his establishing the world’s first public telephone exchange
World’s first public telephone directory, of the New Haven District Telephone Company, February 21, 1878