A reunion of Maine switchboard operators highlights the challenges of making a phone call more than 50 years ago and what it was like to handle emergencies, rude customers and delicate situations.

The business decided to employ women operators and Emma Nutt was the first woman telephone operator. Early switchboard operation was not the easiest of jobs, demanding a high degree of accuracy ...

In the early 1920s, AT&T, the telephone monopoly that grew out of Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Telephone, was America’s largest employer, and specifically employed many women as operators, who ...

AI lessons from the telephone operators of the 1920s. In the early 20th century, thousands of young women worked as telephone switchboard operators.

A reunion of Maine switchboard operators highlights the challenges of making a phone call more than 50 years ago and what it was like to handle emergencies, rude customers and delicate situations.

Margaret Bourke-White—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Telephone operators work at the switchboard in the Pacific Telephone Chinatown branch, 1941.

When Blanche O’Brien’s husband, Guy, started the Hines Telephone Association in 1917, she became the first and only full-time switchboard operator in Hines — a job she held for 40 years.

Vintage Telephone Technology: Switchboard Operators & Long-Distance Calls. Posted: March 11, 2025 | Last updated: March 11, 2025. This vintage film demonstrates the procedures and techniques used ...

TELEPHONE OPERATORS: A WOMEN’S PROFESSION. Though the first switchboard operator was a 17-year-old boy, by the beginning of the 19th century, women dominated the field.

It’s an iconic image from the middle of the 20th century: a telephone operator sitting at a crazily lit-up switchboard, wearing headphones and directing phone calls wherever they need to go.

Playing Operator on a Vintage Telephone Switchboard by Allison Meier July 12, 2016 July 12, 2016. Subscribe to our newsletter.

A reunion of Maine switchboard operators highlights the challenges of making a phone call more than 50 years ago and what it was like to handle emergencies, rude customers and delicate situations.