Observe National Emma M. Nutt Day: an important milestone in communication history

It’s that time of year to give a shout out to Ooma’s favorite woman in telecom history: Emma M. Nutt. So, who is Emma M. Nutt, and why does she have a day? Nutt was the first female telephone operator, and her impact is still felt in the telecommunications industry today.

Fittingly, Emma M. Nutt Day is celebrated on September 1, following Women’s Equality Day on August 26th. The National Museum of American History organized a day to remember her starting in 1984, called All Alone by the Telephone.

Who was Emma Nutt?

Emma Nutt was the first female hired as a telephone operator. She was appointed to the position at the Edwin Holmes Telephone Dispatch Company (Boston) by Alexander Graham Bell himself. Her first day on the job was September 1, 1878.

Nutt’s position expected 54 hours of work per week, and she earned a monthly salary of $10. To put that into perspective, in 1878, the average monthly rent for a 4-room tenement was $5.55, a bushel of potatoes cost 98 cents, and a quarter got you either a dozen eggs or a pound of butter. By today’s standards $10 a month would give you approximately $321.46 of purchasing power.

Emma Nutt’s career and legacy

Nutt was successful in her position as a telephone operator and worked in the industry for more than 30 years. Her role meant more to the industry and women than she realized. Not only did her role contribute to the evolution of the telephone industry, but she also helped pave the way for women to work outside the home.

Little-known Emma Nutt facts

Even if you’re familiar with Emma Nutt, did you know that Nutt wasn’t the lone woman telephone operator for long? Her sister Stella was hired as an operator shortly afterward but left after a few years to get married.

Or, how about this one? Nutt was so good at her job that, according to Wikipedia, while the phonetic alphabet wasn’t a thing yet, she had memorized every number in the New England Telephone Company directory. How many phone numbers have you memorized?

The rise and fall of telephone operators

In the early era of communication technology, you would make a phone call to a telephone exchange, talk to the operator, and ask them to connect you to a specific person. To complete the call, the telephone operator would connect cables. Long-distance calls required several connections.

Why female operators

The first phone call was made in 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. Soon after, the need for telephone operators emerged. In 1878, the job was mainly filled by teenage boys. This practice did not last long. The teenage boys were loud, cursed, impatient, and generally rude. By September of that same year, Bell, in an attempt to fix the problem, hired Nutt.

It worked. By contrast, Nutt was patient, had a positive attitude, and a calming voice that quickly became the standard for a telephone operator. According to the New England Historical Society, by the end of the 1880s, nearly all telephone operators were women. Yet women had more than a few discriminatory hurdles to overcome.

To get hired, the women had to be:

• Between 17 and 26 years old
• Tall enough to use the telephone switchboard

And they could not be:

• Married
• African American
• Jewish

In time, female telephone operators gained status and even a certain amount of power. They received additional training to help them better understand accents and foreign dialects. They led strikes for better pay and worked during the First World War in the Signal Corps Female Telephone Operators Unit. By 1930, there were approximately 235,000 female telephone operators in the United States.

Dwindling telephone operators

Due to technological advances and automation, the number of telephone operator jobs has drastically decreased in the U.S. The decline began in the 1930s when it became possible to directly dial phone numbers. By 1940, there were fewer than 200,000 phone operators in the U.S.

In 1984, there were approximately 40,000 phone operators at AT&T. By 1996, AT&T had only 8,000 telephone operators across the U.S. As of May 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were 4,600 phone operators in the U.S., mostly for emergency services and directory assistance. These jobs earn a mean annual wage of $42,100. Despite dwindling numbers, it’s a job we should still pay homage to for both its impact on the industry and to remain aware of how far we’ve come.

How to celebrate Emma M. Nutt Day

From music about the telephone to learning more about the telecommunications industry to celebrating women in the industry, there are many ways to celebrate Emma Nutt Day. Here are a few ideas.

• Channel your inner Emma Nutt and practice polite, calm, and extra courteous phone manners.
• Celebrate other famous women in communications, such as Jennifer Andreoli-Fang, a noted technologist who earned a Ph.D. and more than 80 patents, and Dana Filip Crandall, who held several executive positions in the industry.
• Check out Ooma’s National Telephone Day playlist on Spotify with 13 songs referencing phone calls or listen to come classics about phone calls like Elvis Presley’s versions of “Memphis, Tennessee”, Jim Croce’s “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)”, Steely Dan’s “Rikki Don’t Lose that Number”, Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You” and perhaps the most famous phone number from Tommy Tutone’s hit, “867-5309 (Jenny). More recent hit to listen to include Reba McEntire’s “Why Haven’t I Heard from You”, Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Thru the Phone”, Maroon 5’s “Payphone”, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”, Adele’s “Hello”, and Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” (featuring Beyonce).
• Visit a telecommunications museum. There are many from the Connections Museum in Seattle to the New Hampshire Telephone Museum.
• Talk to the women in your life about their careers, such as your mother, sister, aunt or other family member.
• Share Emma Nutt Day on social media in case your friends haven’t heard of Emma Nutt’s accomplishments. Use the hashtag #emmanuttday when posting to help spread the word.
• Learn about other significant women in science and technology, like Marie Curie, a physicist and chemist who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win two.
• Celebrate Lily Tomlin’s birthday, which coincidentally falls on September 1. She is a comedian who made the catch line “One Ringy Dingy” famous by portraying Ernestine, a snippy telephone operator, on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and Saturday Night Live.

Discover the latest phone technology

Telephone technology has come a long way since the time of Alexander Graham Bell and Emma Nutt. Today, you can make low-cost local and international calls through the internet, using a technology called VoIP. You can also take your home phone on the go, plus so much more with Ooma’s mobile app.

Photo credit: Public Domain photo from Picryl.com