Emma Nutt becomes the first female telephone operator - September 1st, 1878

On this day in 1878, a woman named Emma Nutt reported to work at the Edwin Holmes telephone dispatch company in Boston, Massachusetts, and in doing so, she became the first female telephone operator.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that uncovers a little bit more about history

(00:21):
every day. As you probably just noticed, I am not
Eve's Jeff Code, nor am I Tracy Wilson. My name
is Gabelusier, and I want you to know up front
that I have a huge respect for all the work
that Eaves and Tracy put into making this show a
compelling part of so many people's daily routines. I'm excited

(00:43):
for the chance to pick up where they left off
and to continue delivering your daily dose of history. If
you feel like you've maybe heard my unusual name before,
it could be from my time as a researcher and
guest host on shows like Part Time Genius and Ridiculous History.
One thing I learned from working on those shows is

(01:03):
that history is never as stuffy and straightforward as we
might expect. It's full of diverse characters, plenty of twists
and turns, and just as much sadness, strangeness and beauty
as we find in the world today. I'm sure you'll
see what I mean as we go along, but for now,

(01:23):
let's get started with our first day in history class.
The day was Sunday, September one, eight seventy eight. A
woman named Emma Nutt reported to work at the Edwin
Holmes Telephone Dispatch Company in Boston, Massachusetts, and in doing so,

(01:49):
she became the first female telephone operator. Prior to Emma,
the work of connecting calls in the early days of
telephones had been primarily the domain of teenage boys. This
arrangement was a holdover from the beginning of telecommunications, when
the majority of telegraph operators were male teenagers. However, phone

(02:11):
companies quickly learned that while teenage boys had excelled in
the speechless realm of the telegraph, they weren't the best
choice when it came to actually talking to people. Customers
complained the boys were impatient, gruff, and prone to swearing.
So with the future of the industry on the line,
the Boston Company decided to try a different approach. Alexander

(02:35):
Graham Bell himself hired Emma, poaching her away from a
nearby telegraph office. Her patients and soothing voice made her
a perfect fit for the job. After a short time
with the company, she had reportedly memorized every number in
the New England directory. This is quite the feat when
you consider how few people today can recall even a

(02:57):
handful of phone numbers by heart. Emma's success quickly paved
the way for more women operators. In fact, her own sister, Stella,
would become the second female operator just a few hours
into Emma's first shift. Less than a decade later, the
reign of the teenage boy had ended, and nearly all

(03:18):
telephone operators were women. Many women welcomed the new career
opportunity the telephones provided, viewing it as an improvement over
domestic service or a job in a factory. But the
work was never easy, and their employers soon conspired to
make the job harder than it needed to be. As

(03:38):
telephone operators in the late eighteen hundreds, Emma and her
co workers connected calls between a relatively small group of customers.
As a result, a certain level of intimacy developed, and
the operators became trusted sources of local news, weather reports,
and even town gossip. The higher ups at the telephone

(03:58):
company took notice of this growing role and began to
see the operators as public representatives of the company. In
light of this, they began imposing stricter requirements on their operators.
For example, if you were a woman seeking a job
as a telephone operator, you had to be unmarried and
between the ages of seventeen and twenty six. In addition,

(04:22):
you had to pass a height, weight, and arm length
test to ensure you could reach the switchboard and fit
into the tight spaces provided to operators. African American and
Jewish women were barred from employment as telephone operators due
to the rampant racial discrimination of the time. The women

(04:42):
who did qualify were met with the demanding and frequently
unpleasant work environment. The operators sat in straight backed chairs
for long hours and were not permitted to talk to
each other. In the nineteen two op ed for The
New York Times, one anonymous opera rader reported saying number
please an average of one hundred and twenty times per

(05:06):
hour for over eight hours a day, and even longer
when working a double shift. As for Emma herself, she
routinely logged an intense fifty four hour work week, earning
just ten dollars per month for her trouble, which is
the equivalent of about two hundred and seventy dollars or
fifty cents per hour today. Yet despite these drawbacks, Emma

(05:30):
seemed to enjoy what she did. While her sister left
the job after a few years to get married, Emma
continued to work as a telephone operator until her retirement
over thirty years later. Around that time, the Boston company
she worked for consolidated with other small exchanges. After merging

(05:50):
with the Bell Telephone Company, it took its services nationwide,
and over time it evolved into what we know today
as a T and T. As the number of phone
users grew, it became difficult for human operators to keep
up with call volume, eventually leading the industry to make
the switch to automated networks. But Emma nuts pioneering work

(06:13):
was not forgotten. In two thousand, a synthesized speech system
created by Phillips Electronics was named Emma in her honor.
Oh and here's a quick bonus fact. The actress and
comedian Lily Tomlin popularized a character named Ernestine the telephone
Operator in the nineteen sixties sketch comedy show laugh In.

(06:37):
Strangely enough, Tomlin was born on September one, the same
day that Emma Nutt jump started the profession all those
years ago. I'm Gay Blusier and hopefully you now know
a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
If you want, you can learn even more about history
by following us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t

(07:01):
D I HC podcast, and if you have any comments
or suggestions, you can send them my way at this
Day at I heart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler
Mays for producing the show, and thank you for listening.
I'll see you back here again tomorrow for another day
in History class. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,

(07:29):
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.