Emma M. Nutt Day

THE HOLIDAY: Emma Mills Nutt (1860–1915) became the world's first female telephone operator on September 1, 1878 when she started working for the Edwin Holmes Telephone Dispatch Company (or the Boston Telephone Dispatch company) in Boston, Massachusetts. More

THE ART: 12”x12” / watercolor on Arches cold-press paper / Emma M. Nutt was the first female telephone switchboard operator, an occupation that would eventually become dominated by young women. These "hello girls” had to routinely ignore the cheap, flirtatious forwards of men who called in. Isn’t that kind of like trying to hit on Siri, today? Anyway, I wonder if telephone operators would have remained mostly men had she not been hired, and how many other ‘masculine’ jobs just never got their own Emma Nutt?  — Shayna Cochefski