Does anybody know if phones were common in the average household in the 1930s?

Question

I'm writing a book that takes place in 1932. I need to know if it was common for someone to pick up the phone and call another person back then. Did they have phonebooks?

Answer 1

Haha, racer, thanks for making me feel old!
Anyhow, in the 1930s, phone service was not at all common. It was restricted to people who would have been considered "upper middle class" - country club folks.
If you lived in a rural area, there would have been no phone service at all, and if you lived in town, it would probably have been a luxury the average worker could not afford, especially in those Depression times.
As an illustration of the limited spread of phone usage, "Liberty" magazine went out of business after their 1936 poll about the upcoming Presidential election proved ginormously wrong. Their poll predicted that Republican Alf Landon would defeat incumbent Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. Landon wound up winning only two small states. The reason they were so far off was that they conducted the poll by randomly calling people on the telephone, and at that time only well-off folks (and thus much more likely to be Republicans) had phones, so their poll was greatly skewed.

Large cities would certainly have had phonebooks. However, in most places, phone directories were not absolutely necessary because there were so few telephones and there was no direct dialing - you rang "Central," an operator answered, you told her what number (or in a small town, what person) you wanted to be connected with, and she plugged patch cords into a big board and put you through.

Answer 2

Phones were more common in cities, as far as residential phones. With rural dwellers, they weren't very common. But nearly every business had a phone of course. For the purpose of your writing project, if the character is in a rural setting, that person could walk down the road to use the neighbors phone. That was something that occurred frequently. There were phone books too. But they weren't all that necessary. You had to talk to an operator first to connect the call for you, at a switch board. A caller wasn't required to know the number for a local call because the operator usually knew everyone at the switch board by name, and could connect the call that way. Many early switch boards only had operators until late afternoon. After that, no phone service. As a business, the switch board room also had business hours.

Answer 3

Phones in the 1930s were not common around Wisconsin. Only important people had ring phones. Later in the 1960s in rural areas they were more popular. They had different ring tones for the people in a valley. Other people would listen to your conversation with this system. One family had one ring, another family had 2 rings and so on.

Answer 4

Not in Europe anyway. we had to run down the street and use the phone at the post office.
Gee that woman behind the counter was grumpy.

Answer 5

phones were very common but not in every home. many used pay phones. you know, you should post this in the senior citizens catagory. they'd know more than i.

Answer 6

Only for the richer sections of society