R H Donnelley

Donnelley Company was founded in 1886 by Reuben Hamilton Donnelley (the son of Richard Robert Donnelley) as The Chicago Directory Company. Donnelley primarily contracted with The Chicago Telephone Company to publish telephone directories for Chicago Telephone customers.

In 1906, however, Donnelley would venture outside Chicago, contracting with Bell System firms such as New York Telephone, Wisconsin Telephone, and Cincinnati Suburban Telephone Co.
In 1917, The Reuben H. Donnelley Company was incorporated and moved to New York City, retaining some offices in Chicago.

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In 1925, Donnelley died, leaving behind his company which continued to contract with the Bell System to publish telephone directories.
In 1961, Dun & Bradstreet Corp. traded stock with RHD, and RHD became a wholly owned subsidiary.
Partnerships
Following its acquisition by D&B, R.

Donnelley began a series of partnerships with several telephone companies to publish directories. RHD also began competing with other telephone companies to provide directories.
From 1980-1985, RHD began a partnership with United Telephone (Sprint), called Uni-Don, to publish telephone directories to customers in central Florida.
In 1986, it contracts with NYNEX to become its directory sales agent.

The same year, RHD starts publishing directories in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania in competition with Bell Atlantic, although a lot of these areas have since been sold off to Yellow Book.
In 1988, it forms Cen-Don with Centel (now part of Embarq) to publish telephone directories in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. Venture One is formed with Southwestern Bell Corporation, which publishes directories in competition with Bell Atlantic in Baltimore, MD and Washington, D.C.
In 1990, DonTech is formed with Ameritech to publish telephone directories in Illinois and northwest Indiana.
Public Offering
On July 1, 1998, D&B spins off R.

Donnelley gains a 50-year licensing agreement to use the SBC Yellow Pages name on all directories published for SBC Illinois customers. Following the AT&T merger, the directories are now known as "AT&T Yellow Pages published by R.