Early telephone operators brought community together Blanche O’Brien was the switchboard operator for Hines Telephone Association for 40 years. Courtesy of Lowell O'Brien ...

Since the beginning of Bell’s telephone company, he had depended upon teenage boys to operate the telephone switchboards. It did not take long for Alexander Graham to realize the boys were ...

So when Bell Telephone launched its first phone systems, in 1878, the company hired as its operators ... teenage boys. Though Bell had no problem recruiting the boys for that work—"this ...

In one instance, the Army forcefully evacuated the Female Telephone Operators Unit of the First Army Headquarters, because the women refused to desert their posts even after their building caught ...

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

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 ...

In the 1950s people relied on newspapers, mail, radio, television, and land-line telephones for communication. There were no cell phones, electronic mail, or social media. The telephone was the only ...