SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
September 1 is … Emma M. Nutt Day
Emma M. Nutt Day celebrates the first woman telephone operator in America. The facts surrounding this holiday are sparse but interesting. This day was established when life was simpler and not everything was so damn serious.
Emma Nutt became the first woman telephone operator on September 1, 1878. She loved the job, and worked at it for 33 years. This special day celebrates the world of telephone operators. It was a very important job for many decades. Today, the position has been eliminated being replaced by automation in telephone systems.
A little side note about Emma: According to Emma, she was "very thankful that my first name was not Imma".
Telephone operators have a sorted history. In January 1878 the Boston Telephone Dispatch company had started hiring boys as telephone operators, starting with George Willard Croy. Boys (including reportedly Emma's husband) had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behavior (pranks and cursing) was unacceptable for live phone contact, so the company began hiring women operators instead. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Emma was hired, starting a career that lasted 33 or 37 years, retiring in 1911 or 1915. A few hours after Emma started work her sister Stella Nutt became the world's second female telephone operator, making Stella Nutt and Emma Nutt the first two sisters in world history being telephone operators although, unlike Emma, she only stayed for a few years.
The customer response to her soothing, cultured voice, and patience was overwhelmingly positive, so boys were soon replaced by women. In 1879 these included Bessie Snow Balance, Emma Landon, Carrie Boldt, and Minnie Schumann, the first female operators in Michigan.
Emma was hired by Alexander Graham Bell who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone; apparently she changed jobs from a local telegraph office. She was paid a salary of $10 per month for a 54 hour week. She, reportedly, could remember every number in the telephone directory of the New England Telephone Company.
To be an operator, a woman had to be unmarried, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six. She had to look prim and proper, and have arms long enough to reach the top of the tall telephone switchboard. Much like many other American businesses at the turn of the century, telephone companies discriminated against people from certain ethnic groups and races. African American and Jewish women were not allowed to become operators.
If you have misplaced something and look for it for a while before discovering it, after you use it, put it back in the first place you looked for it. It will be there the next time you look for it.
If you think someone does not like you, ask to borrow their pen or pencil. They will like you after that.
If you are having a conversation with someone and you think you have lost their interest, fold your arms. If they fold their arms, they are still interested.
Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too or at least think about.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
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Email: brucebrennanlaw@aol.com
Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.
www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)
www.barnesandnoble.com (do a quick search, Title, my name)
www.smashwords.com Do a Title or author search.
Book Titles:
Holmes the Ripper
A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction
"Each morning the day lies like a fresh shirt on our bed; this incomparably fine, incomparably tightly woven tissue of pure prediction fits us perfectly. The happiness of the next twenty-four hours depends on our ability, on waking, to pick it up." - Walter Benjamin
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