Telephones
The cover of the 1972 telephone directory for the southern Iowa city of Centerville. Note the number of exchanges included. Also note the time and temperature number written on the cover by my mother, noting the need to dial only the last five digits of the local phone number. (Don't try to dial it now...it has changed!)
In nearby Moulton, served by the Farmers Mutual Telephone Cooperative, you only had to dial the last four digits of a local phone number.
Other Pages
These scans seemed rather large (around 65-85K) at the time. I compressed them to reduce their size while still maintaining legibility. This was more of a concern when I first developed this set of pages than it would be now.
» The table of contents
» Party-line and other instructions
» The local calling area
Other Phone Stuff
These pages focus on central Missouri, especially Columbia and the area north of Columbia, served for many years by General Telephone (later GTE).
» How to Dial a Phone (Centralia, Missouri, 1954)
» Missouri area code changes in 1971
» A 1950s Automatic Electric dial phone
» Automatic Electric wall phone, still extant in Centralia, Missouri in 2001!
» A three-line Automatic Electric desk phone
» Long distance slip from Columbia, Missouri (1966)
» Newspaper article on seven-digit dialing in Columbia (1971)
Mark RobertsDenver, Colorado
E-mail: Please see the Contact Information page.