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In January 1878, the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company had started hiring boys as telephone operators, starting with George Willard Croy. [5] Boys (reportedly including Nutt's husband [2]) had been very successful as telegraphy operators, but their attitude (lack of patience) and behavior (pranks and cursing) were unacceptable for live phone contact, [6] so the company began hiring women ...
Hello Girls was the colloquial name for American female switchboard operators in World War I, formally known as the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. During World War I, these switchboard operators were sworn into the U.S. Army Signal Corps. [1] Until 1977 they were officially categorized as civilian "contract employees" of the US Army.
The most famous group of American operators were the Hello Girls in the "Women of the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit" of the American Expeditionary Forces in 1917–1919. They were bilingual female switchboard operators sent to France in the World War I. These 223 women were not formally recognized for their military service until ...
The number of women employed as telegraphists increased after the telegraph service was taken over by the British General Post Office in 1870; in that year, 1535 out of 4913, or 31 percent of all operators, were women. [11] [12] In most of Europe, the telegraph service came under the control of the government posts and telegraph administration.
Grace D. Banker (October 25, 1892 – December 17, 1960) [1] was a telephone operator who served during World War I (1917–1918) as chief operator of mobile for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. She led thirty-three women telephone operators known popularly as Hello Girls.
After graduating from high school in 1908, she became a telephone operator in Boston and joined the Boston Telephone Operators' Union in 1912. She joined the executive board of the Boston office of the National Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), and was elected president of the Boston WTUL from 1915 to 1918. She also became president of Boston ...
She was one of the first women to join the United States Signal Corps, where her fluent French skills were in demand during World War I. [4] In January 1918, she became Chief Operator, Second American Unit of Telephone Operators, in charge of hundreds of American women who worked as interpreters in war-related telephone communications. [5]
Merle Egan was born in Kansas c.1888. [8] After three years of high school, she started work in 1906 as a toll operator at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. She then went to work at a public telephone system in Montana, travelling from town to town to fix problems, and eventually became a traffic supervisor.