For much of the 20th century, women played an important role in
telecommunications system of the United States. As telephone
operators, they helped customers make long distance calls,
provided information, and made sure the whole system worked
smoothly. Although remembered primarily as a female profession,
the first telephone operators who worked for the Bell Telephone
Company (later known as American Telephone and Telegraph Company
or AT&T) in the 1870s were teenage boys. Unfortunately the boys
frequently proved rude and unruly, so young women, believed to
be naturally more polite, were hired instead. The first female
telephone operator was Emma McNutt, who was hired in New York
City by a manager who happened to be a neighbor and who thought
Emma was a “nice girl.” Little is known about Emma’s career,
although she was in the vanguard of women who established
telephone operator work as an almost exclusively female job. In
the 1880s and 1890s women telephone operators often served the
same small group of custo