Hold the Line: As telephony grew, so did a workforce of switchboard operators

daily.jstor.org

21 points·apollinaire··7 comments

> Initially, this upgrade came in the form of automatic dialing, tech that allowed callers to reach other each other directly. Invented in 1889 by Almon B. Strowger, a Kansas City funeral director who set out to establish a “girl-less, cuss-less telephone,” automatic dialing ushered in the era of rotary phones.

The real impetus to Strowger is that the other undertaker in town was married to the phone operator.* So when someone called and said they had a dead body strowger didn't get the call often even if he was asked for by name.

* Often the switchboard was just in someone's house or on their porch, and phone service was just available for a few hours a day, when the owner was willing to sit around and wait for someone to call. So no service while cooking, or at mealtime, or at night.

Somewhere my dad has a newspaper clipping showing an ad for my great great uncle’s grocery store in a small midwestern town from around 1890-95. The ad prominently mentions that they have a telephone, and gives the number as something like “215”. I was never sure if that was a number you dialed, or if you ring up the operator and say “William’s Grocery Store, number 215”.

My mother in law’s phone number (in Germany) is 263. In 2023.

There was somewhere an anecdote that projected growth of switchboard operators would be half the US workforce in the (mid XX century?) future

Sounds like something Gartner would say.

This is briefly covered in a fun book, Exploding the Phone, chronicling the early years of the phreaking culture.

http://explodingthephone.com/

Curiously, the incidence of love not being on time rose dramatically at as well.

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