Obsolete professions

CCrawford sez, "NPR highlights a dozen obsolete occupations that have either been despecialized (typist), obsoleted by tech (switchboard operator), or dead but experiencing a small comeback. Accompanied by some great B&W photos." Shown here: a "Lector" -- someone employed to read left-wing newspapers to cigar-rollers while they worked. The practice may have originated in Cuba. Each piece is also accompanied by some audio of people remniscing about the obsolete trade.

The Jobs Of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations

Previously:

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Thorzdad

Re: lead type
While very early type were probably made of lead, most hand-set type were not made of pure lead. Even the stuff melted in a Linotype wasn’t pure lead (if any lead at all.) They were all made of alloys. Pure lead would be far too soft to stand up to repeated impressions on commercial presses. Now, the thin strips of metal used to separate lines of type in a type stick were absolutely made of lead. Hence, the name for the space between lines of type…leading.
nixiebunny

It looks to me like every one of those jobs was rendered obsolete by advancing technology. Curiously, none of those jobs existed in that form two hundred years ago either, so you could say that they were brought into existence by technology.
- Zac
  
  That’s a great observation, and I think there is something to it.
  
  Jobs created by technology are going to be ephemeral and temporary, as technology continues to evolve and change at a rapid pace, so sooner or later they will be made obsolete. We’ll always need farmers and merchants and soldiers, but how much longer will we need stock brokers or auto mechanics or IT personnel? Technology giveth, and technology and taketh away.
  - Symbiote
    
    “We’ll always need farmers”
    
    Will we? Agriculture used to employ almost everyone. Now one person controls the machine that does in an hour what used to take 50 people a day.
dcamsam

Lectors . . . from the description, sounds a bit like the blogger of yesteryear. Or the Glenn Beck.
igpajo

I remember working in a video production studio for a certain giant software maker in 1996 and we were still using a switchboard to patch video and audio feeds to the different banks of VCRs. Even then the patch bay seemed archaic to me since the only time I’d ever seen the equivalent was in old movies of phone operators.
- Jaan
  
  Patch panels work, and they’re simple, that’s the beauty of them. Drew Carey recently Twittered a picture of the lighting patch panel that’s still used for The Price Is Right.
- SFedor
  
  Patch bays are definitely still used for audio studios. When using physical components(ie. compressor, fx box, ect), it is still the simplest way to route your signal without having to rewire the studio each time. I haven’t been on the production side, but I wouldn’t be surprised if local news casts didn’t use them still also for video feeds, though that may now all be digital.
zibalatz

Obsolete in the US, maybe, but definitely not obsolete everywhere, and even the in the US several of these are not fully obsolete. I mean, as the article itself points out, Cuban cigar-rolling factory readers are still in use in Cuba.

There was a good article & video posted a while back about the readers- perhaps even posted here on boingboing- for those interested:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8406641.stm

And as for elevator operators, there are still a few old buildings in Montreal that employ them. Possibly in other cities in North America as well.
- PiperPaul
  
  zibalatz, Please detail where these buildings in Montreal are, as I’ll be there in a couple of weeks and would like to send photos to confirm your observation.
Bevatron Repairman

Hurrah for typesetters! My grandfather worked in a San Francisco printshop for 50-odd years. I was setting type for my own lunch bags when I was six. Fun stuff.
- Glenn Fleishman
  
  I was trained as a typesetter by accident in high school in the 1980s, and put myself partly through college in the late 80s by setting in college and at home on vacations and summer. By 1991, I was an “imagesetter,” running a shop with a Linotype output device, but still setting type and paginating. I started with optical type, finished with digital, and then moved into DTP.
Lady Katey

The typesetter description is a little wack… ‘wooden frame’? Really? Since the advent of the iron hand press in the 19th century type has been set in iron or steel alloy frames. Type-sticks (in which the individual lines are set) may be wooden, especially if they are of a set width, as for newspaper use, but there’s a good hundred years of use of metal type-sticks. If they’re going to talk obsolete, they might as well talk about the ‘state of the art’ before it went obsolete.
- Anonymous
  
  Journalist Bob Greene refers to wooden frames similar to the ones being described in the above post in his book “The Late Edition”.
  
  And that was well into the 20th cent.
Anonymous

Often the lectors read fiction as a form of entertainment. Some cigars are named for the torcedores (cigar rollers’) favorite stories. Hence the “Romeo y Julieta” or “Montecristo.”
InsertFingerHere

Is the job loss a bad thing if it was a position hazardous to one’s health ? All the lead, the fume, coal dust, smoke, raw sewage.. there’s just some shitty jobs out there that make sense to modernize or otherwise do away with.
5onthe5

Milkmen are still around.
Nile

The Lector was a monk who read the Scriptures at mealtimes, and at such times when the labours of the brothers did not require the concentrated mental effort of transcribing the Bible: preparing parchment, cleaning, sewing and so on.

The job’s been around for a while.

In a way, it still is: but what a pity that we fill the ‘idling’ clock cycles of our working day with background muzak and the idle prattle of a DJ.
Stickarm

Copy boy, typist, typesetter — I’m a word processing operator, which is the job a lot of these professions have become, in a weird way. The anonymous commenter who mentioned the “compugraphic editwriter” is my predecessor.

One of the things we’re dealing with in my office lately is the way our assignments are changing from situations where we have explicit instructions (creating an electronic document that incorporate or reflects the content of a handwritten markup) to situations where we have algorithmic instructions (perform this sort of action in every place where it is applicable).
schmod

Video routers have largely replaced patch bays in the broadcasting world. They’re fantastically expensive, but worth every penny.
Anonymous

Most jobs I ever had became obsolete. My first job out of school was as a proofreader. We’d sit, two at a table, and take turns reading aloud to each other from legal documents. We’d even indicate punctuation. Then, I found work as a typesetter. I remember the wooden thing with developing and fixer fluid, I’d stamp out each letter at a time. I also worked as a typesetter on a big “compugraphic editwriter”, doing medical forms. If I wanted to change fonts, I’d lift the top off the machine, and put in a new film belt. All the fonts were kept on these film belts, hanging on a rack. You had to blow air on them to remove the dust. Then I got a job designed slide presentations for executives. We’d save the presentations on floppy disks, record them on slide film, then mount them. We also recorded on “vugraphs” which were big 8×10 slides. Powerpoint put me out of business.
Anonymous

Meh, list is incomplete. It left out ‘major record label executive’.
Klibaner

There is a play about a reader in a Florida cigar factory, Anna in the Tropics. I saw it with Jimmy Smits in Boston. See

http://www.smokemag.com/1203/cover.htm
jaytkay

My dad was a newspaperman, and the Linotype machines were AMAZING.

Imagine word processing – text, font, font size, bold, italic, left/right/center/justified, hyphenation – imagine all that – CAST IN MOLTEN LEAD IN REAL TIME AS YOU TYPE!!!

Holy crap!
colinet

Actually it is NOT an obsolete job. More Lectors have and are still being created and they don’t just read newspapers, but books too. I think not fiction but all sort of educational type stuff, economics lifestyle, marriage, relationships ec.
Lucien

They forgot ‘Record Company Executive’ ;-)
Anonymous

I was working as a switchboard operator up until a few months ago actually, and it wasn’t technology that ended up causing me to leave the position, but my decision to become a full time student again.

(<==is only 24)
PiperPaul

Just signed-up, so please bear with my newbie mistakes.

Does drafting count as an obsolete profession?

http://www.pipingdesign.com/FridayFunnies/drafting/album/slides/Westwood_1923.html

Yeah, sorry, it links to my website, but at least there are some cool old photos of drafting room activity there.

It’s a part of technology history that most have not seen.
KanedaJones

The wife, GimpWii and I live by a lake, and older (and I mean really old) houses in this town often had a room to hold the ice that was cut from the lake in the winter time, to keep food cool all year long.

once we made mention of it in casual conversation, it took off as the catch phrase applied to all the soon to be obsolete workers who fight the system to keep their olden ways alive to stay employed.

newspapers? cable tv?

buncha f_ckin ice cutters if ya ask me.
SeamusAndrewMurphy

I recall reading that lectors were part of the scene in early nineteenth century manufacturing in the U.S., but died out. I’m sure the advent of the “Taylor Men” absolutely killed what was left of the practice by the early twentieth century, though it probably was long gone by late nineteenth century.

Luckily, the MP3 player and audiobooks make for the perfect replacement.
tomorrowboy

Ice men (or women) still exist in SE Asia. I remember seeing people driving around with huge chunks tied to the back of their motorcycles, and once walked past a place that sold it. They had a huuuuuge chunk of ice and were cutting smaller (though still very big) pieces off for delivery.
Don’t think I took any pictures though.
spazzm

‘Lector’ means reader.
It’s an academic title, a teacher may be employed as a ‘lector’ if he has attended university but is not a PhD, for example. I think this is not the case in English-speaking countries, however.

I know this because my father was a lector.
TheMatt

Elevator operators aren’t extinct here in DC. In fact, I’d bet most of you have actually seen one in the last week or so. Where? Why there are elevator operators in the “Senators Only” elevators in the Senate Office Buildings.
PaulR

Albeit for a half a day each, I’ve actually done two of those jobs: pin setting and milk delivery.

I can’t imagine how much lead poisoning occurred from spending all day touching lead type…
- Anonymous
  
  Very little lead poisoning would have come from touching lead type. In order to be poisoned by it, it has to get inside the body, and blocks of metal don’t usually dissolve on touch. I’d be more worried about those in the type casting department, who were working with molten lead and solder all the time. The fumes from that are much more likely to have been doing some harm.
  
  Or if you really want to worry back then, just step outside into the cloud of exhaust fumes from leaded fuel.
- Bevatron Repairman
  
  The bigger issue for lead exposure for typesetters was actually from the use of monotype and linotype machines — machines that made a single block of type for a paragraph or what-have-you — because that stuff was melted back down right there in the shop. Of course, my grandfather worked around molten lead his whole life, smoked a pack and a half of unfiltered lucky strikes every day for seventy years, drank Jack Daniels like he meant it — and died at 87, mostly because he was bored.
cruisecontrol

I, at times become to feel nostalgic and think about how life and technology must have been 150 years ago. Here we are in 2010 and back in 1860 it must’ve been such a simple life, but at the same time, everything was MANUALLY DONE!!! Things were SLOW!!!. We complain about our computers not booting fast enough or FREEZING!!! Back then, I’m sure that we didn’t have to deal with people not starting their work day fast enough or freezing on us!!! It’s a give and take thing, but the way I see it personally is that we were destined to be born at this specific time of our generation. We’ve been “spoiled” by the efficiency of it all. I honestly feel that I would have liked to have lived back in the days when life was simple and I could sit back and read a book on a summer day by a meadow under a shady tree….but that’s me. By the way, I work in a high tech position…so go figure.
David Carroll

I recently visited a museum that was being renovated. Only the large (dinosaur sized) freight elevator was available to the public, and one of the guides was assigned to operate it.

It was fun to have little chats with them as we checked out the place.
oasisob1

What about music publishers?
Anonymous

Here’s an obsolete job – etch doing PWB layout. Even though I practiced 30+ years rich Aunt Asshole reminds me doing advanced PWB layouts is but a “horse & buggy whip job”, even if what I was designing was current semiconductor mfg gear….
Steve Schnier

I worked my way through art college as a cel painter in an animation studio. I applied the colour to animated cartoons. The job no longer exists – digital ink and paint has made it obsolete: faster, cheaper, better. But there’s still something special about a hand painted cel.
jaytkay

Computers are obsolete. True story. Here’s a 1949 photo of a room full of computers.
- kossmikman
  
  I’m sure those mentat will find a job in the future…
  - Felton
    
    Mandatory drug testing might make it difficult for them in the US.
amnyc

In addition to the icemen, the “seltzer guy” is another nearly-obsolete relic. The NY Times did a nice profile of the last seltzer-guy in Brooklyn last year:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/nyregion/26seltzer.html
Tdawwg

Hmmm, I imagine those readings as something like this:

Lector: “Hey, ladies, this newspaper says property is theft, capitalism a lie! Wow, here’s an interesting article on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire! Oboy, some fascinating Nast cartoons! Hey, there, why isn’t anyone interested? Hello? Hello?….”

I guess you had to have been there, but I’m sure it must have been fun.
TheCrawNotTheCraw

A few years ago, there was an interesting article (maybe in the NY Times) about an (entire) caste in India whose work had become obsolete. They traditionally had beaten clothes on rocks in rivers to clean them.

They are being replaced by … washing machines.
Oren Beck

etaion shirdlu
johnocomedy

Great article but rather than “each piece”, only a few (4/12) are “accompanied by some audio of people remniscing (sic) about the obsolete trade.”
MichaelRN

I worked as a bike messenger in Chicago in the ’90s, so I have been inside nearly every high-rise office building in the downtown area. There are quite a few elevators operated by full-time elevator-operators. Most of these elevators were ancient freight elevators, with manual controls. The reason for keeping the elevator operators is that these older elevators cannot be operated safely without a certain amount of training, and also, allowing the public to use the elevators unsupervised would be more likely to damage the elevator. Given the astronomical costs of repairing these relics, and the safety issues (also potentially expensive, if someone gets hurt), it is cheaper to employ a trained human full time to run the elevator.

Funny thing is, that in some of the more modern buildings, which had been built with automatic elevators, the operating engineers’ union regulations still required elevator operators. I always felt sorry for the poor souls whose job was to was to ask the passengers what floor they wanted to go to, and then push the appropriately numbered button.
Kerouac

Two essential “pop culture” works on the subject – “Player Piano” by Kurt Vonnegut, and Burgess Meredith’s Twilight Zone appearance as “The Obsolete Man”. Both have aged quite nicely.
hhype

When we were in Key West on vacation a few years ago we went to the The Key West Museum of Art & History in the Custom House where we saw a painted wood carving called “Old Island Days No. 99 – A Fabulous Industry” which depicted cigar rollers being read to by el lector.

The painter’s father is el lector in the painting and the painting is from 1963 in Key West.
- Diamond Jim
  
  It’s been years since I’ve read it, but Thomas Sanchez’s novel Mile Zero, which is set in Key West, has an absolutely kick-ass description of a lector in action–pretty much the only thing in that book that’s stayed with me. And no, he did not read “left-wing newspapers.”
Anonymous

Lectors were seriously people in the cigar factories in Tampa. And what they read were not the extremely oversimplified “left wing” articles mentioned. They read several newspapers, classic books, and many forms of educational and informative materials. There were essentially the learned person who enabled immigrants to learn both current events, events of homelands, and classical material while they worked.
Diamond Jim

zibalatz #4 beat me to the BBC reference–BBC World News America had their dreadful anchor Matt Frei spend a week in Cuba very recently–week before last, I think–and he even interviewed a lector.

And anon #13, proofreading certainly seems like an obsolete profession when we read anything in print these days, but as an editor who’s made a living doing it freelance I can tell you it isn’t. Perhaps you mean copyholding, which is reading the copy out loud while the other person proofreads, as you describe. That I haven’t done since the mid-80s.
dolo54

Every time I go past a video rental place, I wonder if the people there are looking for new employment.
Anonymous

The Cuban cigar brand Montecristo likes to claim that its name originates with the popularity of the Dumas novel among rollers, who would demand that the lector read and reread it, over and over, year in and year out. So it seems a little narrow to claim that lectors were “employed to read left-wing newspapers.”

It would not surprise me to hear that they were employed to read what the rollers wanted to hear and that they were paid by the rollers rather than the plantation. It seems likely that serialized novels, like those of Dickens, were perennial favorites.