#ResistanceRoots Today in history, 1878: Emma Nutt becomes the first female telephone operator, an occupation that would soon be dominated by women. Alexander Graham Bell hired Nutt to work for the Boston Telephone Dispatch Co., where she spent her entire 35-year career. /1
One ring dingy, two ringy dingy at a time. Not to make light of how dang complicated and exhausting that work must have been. 🚬😎
Ernestine was absolutely hilarious!
Lily Tomlin, when humor could be biting, funny, and good-natured. 🚬😎
My grandma started as an operator in the forties, a single mom with a baby, and retired as management, around the time of the breakup. Ma Bell employed a lot of my family at one point out another.
Yay BOSTON!
Dominated by women so they could pay them less.
Finally, a woman who could handle the drama of crank callers and boys' pranks – talk about a game-changer!
At 2 cents an hour.
Not quite that low, but you're not far off. $5 to $7 a week, I think, which works out to about 10 cents an hour for a 56-hour week.
Why did Ruth Buzzi just pop into my head?
Lily Tomlin m.youtube.com/shorts/JUQvi...
Good Catch!
And nowadays we talk to computers. And the computers don't want us to talk to a human. They will give us an endless loop of frustration in an effort to keep us from talking to a human. Does that scare anybody besides me?
I don't know if it scares me, but it frustrates the bejeevers out of me.
What a Nutt!
My great grandma retired with full pension from PAC Bell. She was a switchboard operator during the late 30’s and 40’s & she continued to work for PAC Bell even after the switchboard operators ceased to exist as a job.
Because they had tried hiring teenaged boys, but the boys swore at customers and connected wrong numbers as a prank.
I am really proud of that Nutt! (sorry, couldn't help myself!)
There is no way to see one of these photos and not thing: "One moment, please."
She spent her entire 35 yrs. You mean she had no other options & was lucky to have a job in 1890!
Yeah, it was a step up from working in a factory or being a domestic servant, but not a very big step.
It was probably a great step but the writing insinuated she had other options!
Fair enough. I'll make a mental note to make it clearer. I meant that she didn't go to any other phone companies over the course of 35 years. 💙
I actually worked with one of those old switchboards...very interesting. It had been the board of the old hotel which became the community college I attended in the mid/late 1970s. I covered the regular operators lunch when I worked in the schools PR office.
Interesting. The closest I came was working a 120-key switchboard in a busy office building in the early 1980s. Like you, I covered during lunchtime. I worked as a typist in the executive suite.
This is a really interesting thread, thank you for posting!
You're very welcome. Thank you for reading #ResistanceRoots.
My grandmother ran the Minneapolis exchange in the very late 1800s (not sure of the year), supervising many operators. She quit when she married (of course). I wish she'd lived longer and I could have asked her about all of it. She was quite the powerhouse, even as "just" a housewife.
Hello caller.. Trouble with your phone.. Okay unplug it & & leave it an hour & plug it in try again... Yes sir that might fix it & as I finish work in 1/2 hour so works for me!
Memories! Never worked a cord board, but my Mom did. My career was in 411
I was a switchboard operator for a hospital back in the 80s. We used bulky keysets, but quite a few of my co-workers were pretty fresh off of cord boards.
Initially, the telephone company hired boys as operators, starting with George Willard Croy in January 1878. Boys had been successful as telegraphy operators but tended to be impatient and were prone to cursing and pranks, qualities unacceptable for live contact with callers. /2
A few hours after Emma Nutt began her job at the telephone company, her sister Stella began working there, becoming the second female telephone operator and the first two sisters in the occupation. However, Stella only worked there for a few years. /3
Nutt was patient and had a soothing, cultured voice that earned an overwhelmingly positive response from callers, confirming Bell’s instinct to hire her. Nutt reportedly memorized every number in the New England Telephone Co. directory, making her extremely efficient. /4
Operators were essential in the early days of the telephone, before the advent of automated exchanges. Dial telephones were invented in the 1930s but took many years to become widespread. A few rural communities did not have them until the early 1970s. /5
Callers connected to an operator at a central office, who plugged a cord into the proper circuit to complete the call. It was complicated, physically demanding work. Operators had to be detail-oriented, make quick decisions, remember names and handle criticism. /6
In addition to learning complex protocols, cords, plugs, lights and keys, operators became an integral part of their customers’ lives, particularly in smaller communities. They were, literally and figuratively, the connection between individuals and the rest of the world. /end
Thanks so much. I always learn interesting things from you. So appreciated.
The lady in the last frame looks very much like my aunt who was a Bell Telephone operator. Ironically my brother put her out of business in the early 70's when he started installing relay switches on the main frame.
Even relays use so much space. I was in a building where one small cabinet of digital switches replaced and left empty a warehouse space of relays.
Every time we pass one of those buildings I say to my husband “that building used to be full of mechanical switching equipment. Now there’s a Mac mini routing all the calls.”
Red Brick and no Windows... There is one a mile or so up the road from where I currently live.
He passed two years ago but he left maBell in the late 80's and started linking chips on cell towers for Lucent
“One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy, is this the party to whom I am speaking?” Lily Tomlin as Ernestine
When I was growing up in the 60s, my mom worked as an phone operator at Sears Roebuck and they had a big Switchboard like this. She would sometimes let me sit on her lap and plug in the call. ❤️
She memorized BOTH numbers? 😁
😂
"Boys had been successful as telegraphy operators but tended to be impatient and were prone to cursing and pranks" well then they weren't successful then, were they? just like all the self-appointed masters of the universe now fomenting wars across the globe. FAILURES.
And wages took a nosedive, no doubt.
“But, women can’t DO jobs unless a man taught them how!” 🙄🙄🙄
One ringy dingy, two ringy dingy!
"Millhouse!"
Kind of amazing. When I was a kid it was pretty normal to call the operator for help in placing calls.
"one ringy dingy.."
Amazing technology.
🏆
My gran on my moms side was a switchboard operator in Detroit back in the 1940s when she was a high school student and she would tell me about the weird calls she used to get.
