I wonder who came up with the flyer/tear off phone number idea?

[dolo amber]

That's really nought short of genius. Poor bastard will never see a cent, either. :shrug:

[kid a]

1. that was me

:silly:

[Magrittes Pipe]

2. Is this really the first time you've thought of this?

You've lived in Clifton, the West Village, the East Side, Lakewood... you've probably seen more flyers with tear-off phone numbers than TV commercials. :eyes:

[dolo amber]

3. It's the first time I wondered who came up with it

:P

[Magrittes Pipe]

4. Welcome to the Jungle.

[XNASA]

5. I think it was Ben Franklin.

:patriot:

[dolo amber]

8. He invented everything

What an attention whore. :eyes:

[XNASA]

13. He even invented attention whoring.....

....just so he could do it.

[Sugar Smack]

6. Are you having a slow work day too?

:rofl: :D

[dolo amber]

10. I wish

I'm having an incredibly busy work day, but part of it is trying to figure out how to advertise a summer jobs program. I figured, hey, why not use ye olde tried and true "I got a bike to sell...call 555-5555" method. :D

[DS1]

7. A castrati with an identity problem?

/got nothin

[dolo amber]

11. I salute your effort

:patriot:

[Beware the Beast Man]

9. Probably some unemployed fat slob.

[SOteric]

12. It was Og, a Cro Magnon hunter/gatherer,

who'd finished burning a pictorial message into a boar skin just before a saber-toothed tiger ripped fringe into both the skin and Og. Og survived his injuries and the resultant fringe gave him the idea.

[benburch]

14. Prostitutes in England did it first.

Seriously.

They started almost as soon as there were public phones with calling cards in the phone boxes. People would take the card down to have the number, so some bright person realized that if she had detachable numbers, her cards would stay up longer.

[johnnie]

15. It was Tim

[benburch]

16. Tim?

http://bau2.uibk.ac.at.nyud.net:8090/sg/python/Scripts/HolyGrail/jpgs/20-tim.jpg

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. I first saw detachable numbers in the 1970s

but that doesn't mean they didn't exist before then.

[Lisa]

18. I'll bet it's closely linked with when telephones became widely available?

Which likely had some regional differences (my folks tell me that prior to WWII, there were lots of homes, even in some areas which we would consider "town" today, which didn't have telephones).