Happy Emma Nutt Day! The world's first female telephone operator starts her new job 141 yrs ago
Emma Nutt (July 1860 – 1915) became the world's first female telephone operator on September 1, 1878, when she started working for the Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch [sic] Company (or the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company) in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Life and career
In January 1878, the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company had started hiring boys as telephone operators, starting with George Willard Croy. Boys (reportedly including Nutt's husband) had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behavior (pranks and cursing) were unacceptable for live phone contact, so the company began hiring women operators instead. Thus, on September 1, 1878, Nutt was hired, starting a career that lasted between 33 and 37 years, ending with her retirement sometime between 1911 and 1915. A few hours after Nutt started working, her sister Stella became the world's second female telephone operator, also making the pair the first two sister telephone operators in history. Unlike her sister, Stella only remained on the job 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.
Nutt 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. Reportedly, she could remember every number in the telephone directory of the New England Telephone Company.
To be an operator, a woman had to be unmarried and 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. Like many other American businesses at the turn of the century, telephone companies discriminated against people from certain ethnic groups and races. For instance, African-American and Jewish women were not allowed to become operators.
Commemoration
This scene from "Bold Experiment – the Telephone Story", depicts the first women operators, Emma and Stella Nutt, working alongside boy operators at the Edwin Holmes Telephone Despatch Co. Boston, Massachusetts in 1878.
"EMMA", a synthesized speech attendant system created by Preferred Voice and Philips Electronics is named in her honor.
1 September is unofficially commemorated as Emma M. Nutt Day.
Her granddaughter?
= new reply since forum marked as read
...and, admittedly, it's fun saying "Emma Nutt". Kinda like "Ima Hogg".
Back before AT&T was evil. 
In 2005, SBC purchased AT&T for $16 billion. After this purchase, SBC adopted the better-known AT&T name and brand, with the original AT&T Corp. still existing as the long-distance landline subsidiary of the merged company. The current AT&T claims the original AT&T Corp.'s history (dating to 1885) as its own.
Seems SBC has instilled their lack of values they always had..I remember a customer from FL, was not happy with me, because I wouldn't take calls off his bill, he went over my head to my boss (was management at the time, was on a takeover call, unruly customer)..come to find out, he was a SBC employee..boy, did he catch it..talk about backfire..
...and immediately set to destroy the unions. I had friends whose parents worked for NY Telephone - they made good money, sent their kids to college, had great health benefits, etc. 
But what a cool place to occupy in history! 
I collect antique radios and telephones so I just dig this stuff! 
As a kid, one of my heroes was the guy from the telephone company who would come in, splice and connect the red, green and yellow wires to your new (or replacement) phone, and had that awesome "Lineman's Handset" which, in my telephone collecting, is a must-have item!
You must've endured "Ernestine" comments as well. "One ringy-dingy".
For sure, those godless commies...my, we have come a long way.....
Your fond memories of a life as an employee doing work worth doing are interesting for your line of work, but also valuable about what work was and can be. I wish they were read by all those who are currently being insidiously lead to view employment through a prism of class resentment, as though exploitation, discrimination and being devalued is all work in a free enterprise system could ever be.
I really stunk at it. So badly, in fact, I disconnected Lady Bird Johnson once.
If so, I pray he wasn't talking about "nut sacks" and "bung holes"!
