Single Women and the Telephone: The Astonishing Shift From “Hello Girls” to “Avoid Phone Calls at All Costs”
The telephone was wildly disruptive when it arrived at the end of the Nineteenth-century. It was a radical innovation that brought change, not the least for single women, both in the workplace and in the male imagination. Women dominated the ranks of telephone operators early on, starting with Emily Nutt in 1878 Boston. The teenage…