Antedating of "yellow pages" (1930)

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:10 AM -0400 10/11/03, Sam Clements wrote:
>In the telephone sense.
>
>M-W strangely has 1952.
>OED has 1956 for the telephone sense, although they have the 1908 Sears
>catalogue with an asterisk.
>
>Using Ancestry.com, from the Helena(MT.) Independent, September 30, 1930,
>p.5(I think), col. 6-7(An Ad):
>
>      Business houses should make sure they have adequate representation in
>the yellow pages, the classified section, which is a complete Buyer' Guide.
>
>I didn't go back any farther on ancestry.  Too tired.  May do more later.
>The term was commonly found almost every year from 1952 back to the early
>40's.
>SC

This reminds me of another claim for local primacy (in addition to
pizza and hamburger, both sadly debunked, and frisbee, which remains
open):  I've heard it claimed that New Haven is the home of the first
phone book (not yellow pages), called "The Book of Names".  When I
first came here in '81, they were still calling the local phone book
The Book of Names, but now it's just called the Greater New Haven
Directory.

Larry