Monday
Mar152010
Round the Sphere Again
Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:53AM 
A working edition.
Lost Jobs
Here’s a gallery of endangered or extinct professions, like lector, for instance, and switchboard operator—a job I used to have, but wasn’t much good at. (I’d say stenographers are obsolete, too, and it’s a good thing. Those girls are dangerous—see below.)
Workplace Hazard
Ah, the story the stone tells. Poor young George Millet died “evading 6 young women trying to give him birthday kisses” in the office where he worked. You’ll find even more details of this sad bit of history in a pdf of an article from the New York Times.
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Reader Comments (1)
"When the first commercial telephone exchange began in Boston in 1878, teenage boys were hired to be operators. But after they played too many pranks on their customers, the company started hiring women ..."
Well, this father of three boys got a good laugh out of that.