Today is Emma M. Nutt Day

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When : September 1st Emma M. Nutt Day celebrates the first woman telephone operator in America. 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. My mom's first job was as a telephone operator back for The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland back in the early 1960's. Oh the stories she would tell. People use to call her asking for information not just to connect calls. For all the younger generation, man that makes me feel old - and I am only 46, here is what a telephone operator did: Before the advent of automatic exchanges, an operator's assistance was required for anything other than calling telephones across a shared party line. Callers spoke to an operator at a switching office who then literally connected their wire to the proper circuit in order to complete the call. Being in complete control of the call, the operator was in a position to listen to private conversations (I remember my mom saying how some operators were fired because they were caught listening in to conversations) . Direct Dial (DDD) systems were developed in the 1920s to reduce labor costs as usage increased, and to ensure privacy to the customer. As phone systems became more sophisticated, this sort of direct intervention by the telephone operator was needed less and less.