The Paris Review

In the age-old battle between book and bath, man has tried many things: the reading tray, the conveniently placed towel, the waterproof page. An eight-year-old has gone one better, inventing a device that suspends the book safely above the tub.

On this day in 1878, the world saw the first telephone directory. The twenty-page book, which listed the numbers of phones in New Haven, Connecticut, instructed users not to “use the wire more than three minutes at a time, or more than twice an hour.”