DAYTON, Ohio — These days you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a child who doesn’t have their own phone.
According to research, nearly 25% of children receive a phone by age 10 and 75% by age 12.
Tools like phone books and Yellow Pages are quickly becoming more of a part of history than something used every day.
However, one Ohio museum, Carillon Historical Park, is celebrating the story of the original search engine and the man who made it happen.
“A lot of people that come through that are less than 20 years old, 25 years old…they have no idea what a Yellow Pages is or what a phone book is,” said Carillon Historical District’s President and CEO Brady Kress.
The newest, permanent interactive exhibit shares the story of Loren M. Berry and the development of the Yellow Pages.
In 1910, Berry rented a desk in downtown Dayton and founded his company.
He started by selling advertising for timetables serving interurban railroads.
“Just like you’d buy an ad on a school band calendar or something nowadays for your company, he was going around selling these for these little timetable schedules and it eventually grew to where ‘let me put a whole catalog together for this town,'” Kress said.
The early work took a lot of hustle and effort.
“In the day, every small town had their own phone company so he was selling advertising and producing these books for every little town across a huge part of the United States,” said Kress.
It turned into a multi-billion dollar industry.
“It was born here just like the airplane, the cash register, freon, pull tabs, pop tops on cans. All of these things came from Dayton, Ohio,” said Kress.
The design for the exhibit was done very carefully with a lot of help from the Barry family.
“John Berry said each one of these towns has a special meaning to his memory,” Kress said while explaining the design of the large phone books at the base of the exhibit.
It’s a piece of history that changed the world and a special story of communication.
“It really is the story about the family, the company, their employees, and how they built an empire right here in Dayton, Ohio,” Kress said.
Loren M. Berry’s famous saying was “It CAN be done!”
The Barry family stayed in the business until selling it to BellSouth in 1986.
The Yellow Pages was last printed in 2019, but still exists digitally today.