One hundred years of phone book history has been put online to help curious Kingstonians trace their family history.

BT has worked with ancestry.co.uk to make the archive, which includes 1,780 different British phone books published between from 1880 to 1984, accessible.

Kingston's first telephone exchange opened in 1893 at 27 Fife Road and one of the first Kingston residents to embrace this new technology was pharmacist Alfred Higgs who placed an advert in the first Kingston phone book, also launched in 1893.

He installed a telephone room at his chemist's shop at 42 Richmond Road where customers could pay 2d - around 1p in today's money, for three minutes' talk time.

Mr Higgs could be reached by dialling 8314 and in the 1893 advert, Mr Higgs said: "I make it a rule when I hear of anything advantageous to my business to get it."

Kingston's leading department store, Bentalls, which opened in 1867, was first listed in 1908 and could be reached by calling a prestigious extension, 1.

Leonard Bentall's Lovelace Road address was listed in 1916, where his number was 2 and George Bentall, who lived in Kingston Vale, could be reached by calling 771.

Digitalising the phone books took 26 months to complete and more than 52 million names, numbers and addresses from London are included in the archive.

The collection will allow budding historians to trace their ancestors and residents can also find out previous occupants of their homes.

Sian Wynne-Jones, from BT archives, said in the 19th century, phone books were an "incredibly exclusive club", costing £20 a year to rent when the average wage was £75.

She said: "As you can see from Mr Higgs' advert, people were fascinated by using the telephone as a business tool."