The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations

[babylonsister]

This is a flash from the pretty distant past; interesting if you have a minute.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124251060

[Liberty Belle]

1. Fascinating -- and how old I feel, remembering some of these --

Including one job I actually held!

[FormerDittoHead]

2. I knew someone who was a photo retoucher. Pencils and brushes. n/t

[enlightenment]

3. I worked for a department store in Denver right out of high school -

in the accounting department. Learned to work an old cash register with the lever on the side to 'add' the amounts; a 'duplex' adding machine that had eight or nine rows of buttons and a lever on the side to sum the calculation; and a teletype machine. I thought the teletype machine was the coolest thing ever.

[Cassandra]

4. Some older buildings in NYC...

still have elevator operators.
I remember trying to make a direct-dial long distance call from Keene, NH in the late 70s. I was interrupted by the operator asking me what I was doing and letting me know I had to go through her.

[Speck Tater]

5. I remember some of those...

In the 1960's I worked as a computer programmer in an office building with an elevator operator. He worked the elevator with a brass wheel the size of a dinner plate with a handle sticking out of it at the rim. He cranked it one way for up and the other way for down. He also had to open and close the doors manually. The inner door was a see-through metal grid-work gate.

My dad and I went bowling together a lot in the early 1950's. I remember when our neighborhood bowling alley put in automated pin setters and laid off all the pin boys.

When I was a little kid we used to hang around when the ice truck came and beg small chunks of ice from the ice man. He'd chip of a piece and wrap it up for us in one of those dark brown paper towels they used to make.

The milkman dropped of milk and eggs every morning when I was a kid. My mom would write a note saying what she wanted and roll it up and stick it in the neck of one of the empty milk bottles. I remember peeling off the foil cap and prying up the little round cardboard cap inside the inner lip of the bottle.

My second ex-wife worked her way through college as a switchboard operator.

Every company I ever worked at until the 1970's had a typing pool.

I took a print shop class in high school and we learned hand typesetting, which was still very much a viable career.

What an interesting list. Make me feel really old, and I'm only in my mid 60's.

[FreakinDJ]

7. I remember "Punch Tape"

[Speck Tater]

8. hehe,. me too. Big yellow rolls of it. :) nt

[On the Road]

14. I Took a Fortran Course in the Early 1980s

which used punch cards. Hard to believe -- they were on the way out even then.

[tblue37]

11. I miss having milk delivered by a real milkman.

Funny thing is, I am lactose intolerant and never drink milk now. But I loved having milk delivered in the morning when I was a kid--especially the chocolat milk.

[ashling]

6. My father used to hitch up the horses

for his brother in law's ice wagon and on occassion delivered ice (1930s)

[Hello_Kitty]

9. I think we need to bring lectors back.

People reading left-of-center and pro-union tracts to workers would be a good thing. :)

[madamesilverspurs]

10. Switchboard.

I operated one very similar to the one in the picture. Worked in a typing pool, too, with those big green manual typewriters. Also ran a mimeograph machine; thinking about it all these years later I can still smell that fluid. When we were kids the milkman used to let us ride in the back of his truck in the summertime; when we got done riding he'd give each of us a big chunk of the ice to take with us. There was also a breadman, delivered to the house once a week; his cinammon bread was the best I've ever had. Fuller Brush man used to come around, and we sometimes had to call a television repairman. . .

-

[tblue37]

12. I do not miss mimeograph machines! nt

[rpannier]

13. I wish they'd go back to milkman delivery service

I remember it when I was a child (late 60's-early 70's).
It was great

[Mopar151]

16. Making a minor comeback in these parts n/t

[wolfgangmo]

15. A question to everyone who would want those services returned.

Are you willing to pay for them? That is to say to support a small business person and a local economy? It will be more expensive.

If I had to hazard a guess given the number of folks on the DU you seem to support companies like Walmart, and jump on the bandwagon to slam any medical posting that is not based on Pharma or the AMA, that the answer would be hell no.

I also suspect that most people would claim that they would pay for it, but in reality would not.

I hope I'm wrong, and I'm ready to be proven wrong.

[IcyPeas]

17. Telex operator and then....

went on to using a Mag Card (word processor), then Wang word processor. I actually enjoyed every one of those jobs.