Where Did the People in Between Go?
About forty years ago, if I wanted to call my aunt in America, I had to go to the telephone and telegraph office. I would request an international call…
By Charlotte Hayes
About forty years ago, if I wanted to call my aunt in America, I had to go to the telephone and telegraph office. I would request an international call and wait for the operator to connect me. I remember waiting an hour at a time. The voice on the other end of the receiver seemed to run a race down the telephone line and only reached me after a while. A lot of people worked in that office. Now I just take my phone out of my pocket and dial. No waiting, no asking anyone to connect me. Things have gotten so convenient. Where did the people in between go? Some took on other work, some retired, I suppose. They didn't all leave overnight. As the work that passed through human hands slowly shrank, the telephone office I remember changed along with it. Look at Korea's national telephone company. Machines that connected calls without an operator were developed in the mid-1980s…
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