The Rise and Fall of the Telephone Operator

Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone in 1876, and the first automated call-switching system was introduced only 16 years later in 1892. While the phone itself was adopted rapidly, automatic switching was so slow to catch on that human telephone operators handled most calls for decades afterward. Bell Telephone wanted to keep their technology easy for the user- just pick up the phone and tell the lady what you wanted. And operators were almost always women, who were found to be more polite, more proficient, and cheaper to hire than men.

An operator did more than simply connect a customer to his or her desired number, however. In the early decades of the industry, telephone companies regarded their business less as a utility and more as a personal service. The telephone operator was central to this idea, acting as an early version of an intelligent assistant with voice recognition capabilities. She got to know her 50 to 100 assigned customers by name and knew their needs. If a party didn't answer, she would try to find him or her around town. If that didn't succeed, she took a message and called the party again later to pass the message along. She made wake-up calls and gave the time, weather, and sports scores. During crimes in progress or medical emergencies, a subscriber needed only to pick up the handset and the operator would summon the police or doctors.

Unlike other modern technologies, automatic telephone switching happened first in small towns and rural areas, then spread slowly to cities. Meanwhile, millions of women made a meager living keeping us connected. Read how that happened at Econ Focus. -via Damn Interesting  

(Image credit: National Archives)


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I love how the cable plug used on the switchboard is still the same plug used on electric guitar amplifiers well over a century later; and a downsized version became our modern day headphone port (that is slowly being phased out, but frankly, why mess with something so great?).
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I would expect the result to be correlated to the limited off-shelf life of mayonnaise and not to the actual consumption...

For me it is just the other way, ... i like mayonnaise, but i can’t stand this "Miracle Whip" stuff.

I even order a „Quarter Pounder with Lettuce and Tomato“ (still available here) without the white greasy stuff...
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Looking at the chart in comparison to the strength of the flavor of each condiment, it seems like the order is right on par.

- Mayo has the weakest flavor by a large margin
- Ketchup, Soy Sauce, and BBQ are about equal to one another (BBQ varies a little depending on style).
- Hot sauce, Mustard , and Steak Sauce are very strong flavors.

Looking at it that way, we would expect a regular person to go through a jar of mayo faster than they go through an equal size jar of mustard, simply because it takes a lot less mustard to blend with the various flavors in a sandwich. The chart looks like about 4x as much mayo is consumed, and tbh, I would readily say that mustard's flavor is easily 4x stronger than mayo, so 1/4 of it is necessary to be enough for balance of flavors in a dish that has both.
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Some of this might be skewed by the price per ounce, as it is in dollars, although I think the prices of ketchup, mayo, and soy sauce are all about the same at a regular store. Although when cooking, as opposed to just using as a condiment, I would say a lot more mayo gets used in things like potato salad compared to how much ketchup or mustard would get used in something like a coating a meatloaf or roast, etc. I probably spend the most on soy sauce even when buying bulk containers, as it gets used a lot in cooking, while a small container of mustard lasts a couple months, and I end up leaving ketchup in the fridge enough years it goes bad.
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