In the early days of the telephone, knowing who had one and what the number was quickly became a problem. The first telephone directory in the U.S. was published this week in 1878, in New Haven, Connecticut. It wasn’t a big list — there were only 50 subscribers. A little later, a directory also came out in San Francisco, with about 170 names. Now, there are over 21,000 retail establishments in the U.S. selling landline and cellular phones, with annual receipts from such sales at over $10 billion. Nearly 115 million or almost 97 percent of occupied households in the U.S. have telephones. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at <www.census.gov>.